Essay On Prenatal Diagnostic Testing

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The prenatal diagnostics and prenatal screening being routine procedures should be considered as advantage of modern medicine. It helps to reveal wide spectrum of fetus abnormal conditions, but not only congenital defects and malformations. Early detection of many of them could help to perform surgical correction and necessary management as soon as possible in order to save newborns’ lives. On the other hand, this method is widely discussed and it has many opponents, and in some countries prenatal diagnostic procedures is not considered now as a screening method. Main ethical issues are terminations of pregnancies in case of malformations, which may be supposed as eugenical abortion, inform consent and problem of decision-making process. This problem is closely related to moral status of fetus, ethical issue about the value of life and problem of what kind of condition should be tested for. Moral status of fetus and abortions In all prenatal diagnostic tests, there is an assumption that there may be …show more content…

In most of the cases, women pay attention to doctor’s recommendations, they also can notice the non-verbal signs [2]. Truog (1996) consider that “an informed choice can be made if women receive all the information relevant to the decision to undergo or forgo the test and feel free of coercion or persuasion” [7]. The decision to give birth to a child, who have disabilities is depends on socio-economic status of family. It is especially difficult for the families with unsufficient economic and emotional status. However, even families with high income may have difficulties with such decision due to fraud of society opinion [8]. Moreover, in some countries, insurance companies refuse in healthcare insurance for a children with congenital disabilities if it is known that disability have been diagnosed prenatally and could have been prevented