Prenatal tests for chromosomal disorders are sometimes inaccurate and lead to abortions and shifting standards of care, reports show.

In May 2014, Joanie Clemons of Stockbridge, Ga., was visiting the doctor’s office for a breast exam when a urine test brought unexpected news: She was 9½ weeks pregnant with identical quadruplets.

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One of the babies had already miscarried, though. And at 5 feet tall, Clemons was at high-risk for pregnancy complications with the remaining triplets. To check for potential problems with the babies, her hospital ordered a MaterniT 21 test—a blood test to screen for genetic disorders—that came back positive for chromosomal abnormalities. Another ultrasound-based test showed “baby C” was at high risk for Down syndrome. A prenatal specialist recommended Clemons abort all three babies or at least “baby C,” since he would steal resources from the other two. Her OB-GYN agreed and called her selfish when she declined to abort.

As it turned out, the tests were wrong. Clemons found a different hospital and doctor, and despite a difficult pregnancy, an early delivery, and a difficult 10 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, her triplet boys were born without any chromosomal disorders…

Yet some doctors still take the test results as certain and encourage abortion because of them. And when parents decide against abortion even after tests accurately reveal a disorder, physicians may still change their standards of care for the child…

“The hope is that someday these results will actually help treat these unborn babies before birth … [and] help babies survive and actually help their quality of life,” Sander Lee said (directed a lab to to detect diseases through DNA Tests at College of Wisconsin). She pointed to existing cases in which doctors have been able to repair a baby’s structural abnormality in utero after detecting it in an ultrasound…

According to the study results, all parents reported that the medical professionals they worked with opposed intervening to prolong the lives of the babies. One parent said, “We were being repeatedly told she was going to die and nothing was worth treating.” Of the parents who received prenatal diagnoses of the disorders, 61 percent said their providers pressured them to abort the baby. According to one parent, “The obstetrician encouraged abortion, saying that we would never find any doctors to treat her. We would be doing her a favor by saving her from suffering.” Women quoted in the Times report who took the highly inaccurate chromosomal tests also said they began considering abortion after their babies tested positive for disorders.

“There is this bias that’s sometimes in the community: If we know that this child has some type of life-limiting condition that somehow we’re supposed to just walk away,” said Sander Lee, who is now director of life sciences at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute. “Whereas seeing them as a precious life that deserves every act of medical treatment at our fingertips to help to save these children and give them the highest quality of life and longest life as possible—that’s, I think, where the mentality really should be.”

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(Excerpt from World News Group. Photo Credit: Getty Images)