Genetic testing doesn't kill, abortion does

As I have written before, I have become deeply involved with the current healthcare reform debate arguing that the system desired by the President and Democratic Congressional leaders will lead to rationing of care and slower development of potential life-saving treatments for children like Gunner. Recently my research into this issue has led me down another path: pre-natal genetic testing.

Doing a simple Google search you can find dozens of articles and medical journal reports discussing the use of pre-natal genetic testing and debating the morality of the issue. Ethicists and physicians perform cost-benefit analysis’ of expensive yet exhaustive pre-natal testing compared to bringing a child into the world who will have a challenging life and cost thousands in medical care.

One theme is apparent; unlike with cancer where we are “racing to a cure,” these scientists offer hope that we can eliminate diseases by terminating those with them. An AP article yesterday, on February 17th, headlined, “Testing curbs some genetic diseases.” Couldn't the article title have been, “Testing snuffs out those with genetic diseases?"

I am not angry at the AP writer for the writing the story as I was excited for finally someone has admitted that genetic testing is killing little girls and boys like Gunner. [my emphasis]

I understand her anger and frustration.  Having tested pregnant mothers and their partners for cystic fibrosis mutations, I am fully aware of how this information is being used.  But I disagree that it is the "genetic testing [that] is killing little girls and boys like Gunner."  Genetic testing may be cited as the reason to kill a baby with a genetic disease, but the REAL killer is abortion on demand.  Without legalized abortion, prenatal testing would be what it should be, a way to find out more about the life going in the womb, especially if something is going wrong.  Without legalized abortion, the use of prenatal testing would be naturally limited to conditions that could benefit from some kind of prenatal intervention.

The problem is abortion and a medical establishment that uses it as a "solution" to medical problems.  Always has been.  Abortion takes clinically useful information and makes it deadly.

Why do I feel compelled to make this distinction when I know that the information that prenatal genetic testing provides is being used as the reason to murder babies with genetic disorders?  Because I know that someday doctors will likely able to treat genetic disease in utero.   Possibly even with gene therapy.  I envision a day where drugs that are currently being tested to reverse the cognitive symptoms of Down Syndrome are used in the womb to halt the effects of an extra chromosome 21.  That cannot happen without an accurate prenatal genetic test. 

We should not equate prenatal genetic testing with murder, especially in law.  If we do, we may lose valuable future opportunities to heal in the womb.

I do wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Hawkins assessment of the way eugenic abortion is portrayed.  Aborting a child with a genetic disease DOES NOT cure the disease.  It only gets rid of the people with it.  That wouldn't work with cancer, but somehow when it comes to life in the womb, death is described as a "cure."

**Note: I am FULLY aware that amniocentisis (the most common way prenatal genetic testing is now performed) can cause miscarriage but that is NOT the intent of the procedure.  While the very intent of abortion is to destroy the life in the womb.  In the very near future, I am positive there will be ways to conduct prenatal genetic testing that is less invasive or even non-invasive.**