PRENATAL GENETIC TESTING:
Since the 1950s there have been various forms of prenatal screening for complications and birth defects. Since then, these screenings have been steadily getting safer and more accurate. Currently a parent in British Columbia is always given the choice of having a free prenatal screening once their pregnancy reaches ten weeks. This is a test that can tell a parent if their child is more or less likely to have down syndrome, Trisomy 18, or Neural Tube Defect. There are also tests which can test for more things at an early age such as more birth defects and the baby’s gender. Though the tests are not always completely accurate, and can cause pregnancies to fail, many women choose to do them. This is an overview of how the tests work and the pros and cons of having them done on your child.
The tests begin with two simple blood tests, taken any time from nine to thirteen weeks into the pregnancy, and then the second at fourteen to twenty weeks. The blood tests can pick up the fetal DNA circulating in the mother’s blood, and those DNA can be examined to find potential chromosomal issues. The tests will give you results within ten days and they will tell whether you are at high or low risk of having a child with one of the defects. The results are not always accurate, only about thirteen out of five hundred who show up as ‘at high risk’ actually have children with defects. Similarly, one in two thousand two hundred and fifty that show up as ‘not at risk’, will in fact have a defect of some sort. If the test shows that the child is at higher risk, you can have another test done to tell you, with almost 100% accuracy, whether or not the child will have down syndrome, Trisomy 18, or Neural Tube Defect. This more accurate test uses a sample of the umbilical cord or amniotic fluid, obtained by sticking a needle into the woman’s abdomen and into the uterus. The rates of this test causing a pregnancy to fail are one in two hundred.
Prenatal screening tests can be very useful for preparing parents for the possibility of having a child with a chromosomal issue, or for giving parents the choice to abort the pregnancy. Many parents choose to do the test because they simply want to be prepared if they are going to end up with a child with one of the possible defects. It can be useful to know beforehand if your child will have something like down syndrome, because then you can figure out a plan for people to help you with the care and to have the right resources put in place so that you are prepared. Other parents might choose to end their pregnancies if they find out that their child is at high risk of having a chromosomal issue. There is a lot of controversy about this. Many people who generally support abortion and the right to end unwanted pregnancies do not support prenatal screening because they feel it is wrong to end the life of a future person because they have an issue such as down syndrome. There is also loads of controversy about having the gender on the test, because that enables people who specifically want a boy or girl to end a pregnancy simply because they do not like the gender of the child.
There are also a lot of reasons that the prenatal screening tests are not good. One of the largest reasons not to do the scan is that it causes unnecessary anxiety for the parents. The stress rate of parents awaiting their scan results is shown to be ten times higher than the average person. If the scan tests positive for one of the defects, then parents are also forced to make the very difficult decision of whether or not they should end the pregnancy. A second very large reason that the test is not a good idea is that if it shows positive and you go on to do the IPS (invasive prenatal scan), the chances of the IPS causing your pregnancy to fail are one in two hundred, that means it is more likely for the scan to end your pregnancy than for it to show that your baby has a chromosomal problem. There are also a couple of smaller reasons, one is that the scan is only available for ages nineteen and up. Teen pregnancies are common, and abortions are available for all ages, so why can’t a pregnant teen find out if their child has an issue? It would certainly be hard for a teen to raise a child with down syndrome. Many people have other ethical reasons not to do the scan, one of which is that if it becomes very common to abort a baby with down syndrome, then there will be fewer people in the world who have down syndrome and the support for them will become very minimal.
Those are just some of the many areas currently being researched by various people and organizations having to do with prenatal scanning. It is a huge topic for discussions about ethics, and many people don’t even know where they themselves stand on the topic. Genetic engineering is amazing and revolutionary technology, but it also has the potential to be devastatingly dangerous. Prenatal scanning technology is still being developed, and in the future many more things will be able to be scanned for. People are also working hard to make the scans more accurate. This is a huge topic to discuss and it will be interesting to know how these prenatal scans help shape the future of our world.
PERSONAL OPINIONS:
Before I was born my parents chose not to do the prenatal scan. They reasoned that to know for sure if their baby would have an issue, they would be risking their baby’s life, and that seemed wrong to them. They also knew that even if the baby would have a problem, they would not have an abortion because that would be too hard for them. My parents are not anti-abortion, they just thought it felt wrong in their case, since they wanted a baby. I don’t really know where I stand on this topic. It seems kind of unnecessary for down syndrome, since people who have down syndrome are on average happier than the average person. On the other hand, it seems like it might be useful for Trisomy 18 and Neural tube defect. Babies with those conditions usually don’t live past a few days, so it might be kinder to them and easier on the parents to abort them before they are born.
Carlson, Laura M, and Neeta L Vora. “Prenatal Diagnosis: Screening and Diagnostic Tools.” Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics of North America, U.S. National Library of Medicine, June 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5548328/.
Globe, Fred Lum/The, and Michelle Siu/The Globe. “A New Generation of Prenatal Testing Raises Ethical Questions.” The Globe and Mail, 11 Jan. 2018, www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/new-prenatal-tests-for-parents-gets-mixed-feelings/article37570374/.
“Prenatal Genetic Screening Program.” Perinatal Services BC, www.perinatalservicesbc.ca/our-services/screening-programs/prenatal-genetic-screening-program.
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