Early Blood Test for Baby's Gender – Will Knowing Sex Sooner Lead to Higher Abortion Rate?

It’s not a pleasant thought, but a new blood test that determines a baby’s sex at the 7-week mark could lead to “sex-selective” abortions.

A meta-analysis encompassing data from 57 studies and 6,000 pregnancies revealed that a blood test conducted 7 weeks into a pregnancy correctly identified the baby’s gender approximately 95 to 99 percent of the time.

The test involves taking a blood sample from the mother and testing it for fetal DNA in order to find out the sex of the baby, which causes no risk to the pregnancy (unlike other prenatal testing methods, such as amniocentesis). It’s also been found to be more accurate than urine sampling, which has also been used to find out the baby’s gender.

Finding out gender early seems like just another positive advancement in medical technology, but it also raises ethical issues – the test results, if not desired, leave parents with a window to terminate their pregnancy if they choose. While this may seem unlikely in a country like the United States, it could become a problem for countries like China and India, where the sex of a child carries more significance to parents and in society.

The blood test can also be used to detect medical issues associated with sex at an earlier date, which could again be reason for some parents to consider ending a pregnancy. With later detection, they may not have had the option.

So many questions come out of these new findings – is it okay to choose to end a pregnancy for medical reasons, but not based on gender? Or are both options okay? Or neither? And who should be deciding, is it parents, the government or health care professionals?

While the choice to have the test is personal, it is certainly making waves in the medical and ethical communities. We want to hear your thoughts in the Comments!