- Jun 24, 2003
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WASHINGTON --A new advance in technology may mean a new setback for one group in the human family.
The recent announcement of a screening test that can identify unborn children with Down syndrome in the first trimester has raised the specter of even more babies with the condition being aborted. Already, doctors estimate about 80 percent of mothers who receive positive results for Down syndrome in the second trimester decide to abort their effected children, according to The New York Times.
Sponsors and researchers involved in the $15 million study involving more than 38,000 American women hailed the results, which found that combined blood and ultrasound tests are able to identify Down syndrome 11 weeks after conception, The Washington Post reported Nov. 10, the day the research results were released in The New England Journal of Medicine.
This is a big deal for women, the head of the study, Fergal Malone of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, said, according to The Post. In light of this study, we should offer screening to all women in their first trimester.
Pro-life bioethicists, however, decried the news.
Prenatal genetic tests for Down syndrome are a way of drawing a bulls eye on an unborn baby, targeting him for abortion, said C. Ben Mitchell, a bioethics professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago and a consultant for the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Eliminating Down syndrome children through abortion is a particularly egregious form of eugenics.
Routine genetic testing for disabilities will turn back the clock on all the advances we've made toward becoming a welcoming culture to people with disabilities, Mitchell told Baptist Press. What could be less welcoming than aborting children with Down syndrome?
Randall OBannon of the National Right to Life Committee told The Post, These tests appear to be used only to select babies for abortion, including as many as five percent who may not even have Down syndrome.
The new test, which was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, may produce not only fewer children with Down syndrome and other impairments but a reduction in research dollars for such conditions, some say. If you can terminate pregnancies with a condition, who is going to put research dollars into it? asked Nancy Press, an Oregon Health Science University professor, according to The Times.
Experts have said Down syndrome births should increase because of the greater age of women having children, but the number has declined instead, according to a study by the University of Connecticut Health Center. Estimated births of Down syndrome children in the United States were 3,962 in 1989 but 3,654 in 2001, The Times reported. It was projected there would be more than 7,200 Down syndrome births by 2001, according to the study. The explanation by experts is more pregnant women have had tests that resulted in more aborted children who have tested positive for the condition.
Down syndrome, which normally results when a person has three copies, rather than two, of chromosome 21, is the most common cause of developmental disability, according to the Down Syndrome Information Network. It can cause increased chances of such medical problems as heart abnormalities, vision and hearing problems, and infection.
From here
Lord have mercy !
The recent announcement of a screening test that can identify unborn children with Down syndrome in the first trimester has raised the specter of even more babies with the condition being aborted. Already, doctors estimate about 80 percent of mothers who receive positive results for Down syndrome in the second trimester decide to abort their effected children, according to The New York Times.
Sponsors and researchers involved in the $15 million study involving more than 38,000 American women hailed the results, which found that combined blood and ultrasound tests are able to identify Down syndrome 11 weeks after conception, The Washington Post reported Nov. 10, the day the research results were released in The New England Journal of Medicine.
This is a big deal for women, the head of the study, Fergal Malone of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, said, according to The Post. In light of this study, we should offer screening to all women in their first trimester.
Pro-life bioethicists, however, decried the news.
Prenatal genetic tests for Down syndrome are a way of drawing a bulls eye on an unborn baby, targeting him for abortion, said C. Ben Mitchell, a bioethics professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago and a consultant for the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Eliminating Down syndrome children through abortion is a particularly egregious form of eugenics.
Routine genetic testing for disabilities will turn back the clock on all the advances we've made toward becoming a welcoming culture to people with disabilities, Mitchell told Baptist Press. What could be less welcoming than aborting children with Down syndrome?
Randall OBannon of the National Right to Life Committee told The Post, These tests appear to be used only to select babies for abortion, including as many as five percent who may not even have Down syndrome.
The new test, which was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, may produce not only fewer children with Down syndrome and other impairments but a reduction in research dollars for such conditions, some say. If you can terminate pregnancies with a condition, who is going to put research dollars into it? asked Nancy Press, an Oregon Health Science University professor, according to The Times.
Experts have said Down syndrome births should increase because of the greater age of women having children, but the number has declined instead, according to a study by the University of Connecticut Health Center. Estimated births of Down syndrome children in the United States were 3,962 in 1989 but 3,654 in 2001, The Times reported. It was projected there would be more than 7,200 Down syndrome births by 2001, according to the study. The explanation by experts is more pregnant women have had tests that resulted in more aborted children who have tested positive for the condition.
Down syndrome, which normally results when a person has three copies, rather than two, of chromosome 21, is the most common cause of developmental disability, according to the Down Syndrome Information Network. It can cause increased chances of such medical problems as heart abnormalities, vision and hearing problems, and infection.
From here
Lord have mercy !
