Pros And Cons Of Prenatal Genetic Testing

The practice of prenatal genetic testing, although becoming commonplace, has been put at the center of the abortion debate in the United States. Doctors should only perform prenatal genetic testing in rare cases and very sparingly in order to protect the lives of the unborn whose genome sequence may deviate from what is considered genetically ¨normal¨. Although ¨testing and abortion are not synonymous¨ (Rebouché and Rothenberg 993) these two have begun to form a clear connection in a world where abortion is now acceptable. While prenatal genetic testing makes improvements every year, there still is a risk of harming the unborn, yet living child. Not only can testing bring harm to the child, it may also lead to the parent´s decision to terminate a pregnancy whose gene´s are wrongly diagnosed because ¨no one knows what 90 percent of genes in a …show more content…
Genetic tests are never very accurate and can ¨greatly [increase] anxiety from a positive result, [and] false reassurance from a negative result¨ (Press 74). Why go through genetic testing and have to face the possibility of a miscarriage when the results are not guaranteed to be accurate? The risks of genetic testing to the unborn child and even to the mother is not greater than the gain that can come from the results. Genetic testing is still relatively new with the first time it ¨changed dramatically [was] in the early 1970s¨ (Press 73) moreover, it still needs drastic improvement before it can grow to be a multi-million dollar industry as some predict it will become (Shurkin). As Shurkin says, this ¨technology is not science fiction¨ it is something that has become more commonplace. It is scary to think about the fact that parents will eventually be able to see every trait their child will have or might develop before the baby is born. Maybe even before the second and third trimester of a