With this new technology individuals have the power to determine whether they want the fetus in question based on its sex. Even though this test has the potential to determine whether the fetus has certain disorders or will suffer medical complications, it also has the potential to serve as a test for sex selection. Parents are able to decide whether they want the baby depending on the sex, especially involving countries like China and India. This test would enable people to discover the sex as early as seven weeks without an ultrasound. I think this is an important factor because for many people looking at the fetus and hearing the heartbeat makes the fetus all the more real and brings emotion into the situation. There are pills which are able to secretly terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks, which according to many is before it is actually considered to be a baby. This further complicates the issue of abortion.
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ReplyDeleteI think bioethicist Audrey Chapman makes a valid point when she says that “Women may be less invested in their pregnancies earlier than they are later, and the question has been raised whether women will look at their pregnancies increasingly as being conditional: ‘I will keep this pregnancy only if.’ ” New technological advances such as the use of DNA to determine the sex of the fetus (earlier than the normal sex-selection process would) are posing increasing challenges to the question of abortion and are further intensifying the shades of gray in a debate that simply cannot be black-and-white. I would imagine that anti-abortionists would fear that this DNA technique may indirectly encourage more women to exploit the legalization of abortion and use it as just another form of contraception. (because this convenient and early sex-selection method would be available to them at a more affordable price than the normal sex-selection process, maybe more and more women would be more inclined to abort their fetus at the early stages-- before being faced with the emotional experience of actually seeing the ultrasound/hearing the heartbeat, etc.) Abortion would thus become less of a physically and psychologically damaging decision for the mother.
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