Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 9

Ethics - Essay Example One common practice includes amniocentesis which is used to determine whether a child will maintain chromosomal problems such as Down Syndrome. Unfortunately, this testing procedure does not identify these genetic abnormalities until the 16th week of pregnancy, long after the child is already well-formed (Ring-Cassidy and Gentles, 2003). A more modern diagnosis process, the Chorionic Villi Sampling method (CVS) occurs during the first trimester however the procedure has been known to cause limb defects (arms and leg) to healthy children (Ring-Cassidy and Gentles). There does not appear to be a viable prenatal testing system which can accurately predict genetic characteristics, plus the long-term damage to both the mother and the child creates a new ethical dilemma. Deemed bioethics, it is the study of whether prenatal, genetic results are sound enough justification for aborting the fetus. This paper describes the ethics behind this controversial abortion practice. Medical screening technology has not yet advanced to where physicians and geneticists can concretely identify future genetic deficiencies in developing fetuses. In a situation where a pregnant woman is relying on prenatal testing results to determine whether to carry a child to full-term, the current stage of medical research simply provides mothers with no viable options other than to prepare for the eventuality of raising a genetically-deficient child or abort the fetus immediately. Kuhse (1998) clearly offers that prenatal diagnostics is wrong at its very foundation, where abortion becomes the only viable alternative to carrying the child full-term. The author suggests that good-spirited attempts to locate genetic defects such as Huntington’s disease or cystic fibrosis will ultimately lead to a social shift where less-critical fetus issues are assessed