Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) uses a blood test to screen for chromosome abnormalities like Down syndrome early in pregnancy. Some women use positive results to terminate pregnancies or prepare for a child with disabilities, while critics argue it degrades the value of disabled children. Most women (over 90%) terminate if prenatal testing shows Down syndrome. As genetic testing becomes more widespread and affordable, it raises debates around abortion, disability rights, and eugenics.

1. NON-INVASIVE
PRENATAL TESTING
(NIPT)
By: Sarah Lodewyks

2. What is it?
•“Non-invasive Prenatal
Testing (NIPT) is a single
blood test that uses cuttingedge technology to screen
pregnant women for
chromosome problems, as
early as 10-weeks in
pregnancy.” (Medcan, 2013)

3. Why?
• Women get NIPT to diagnose their babies with
genetic mutations (disabilities), even before they
are born.
• By getting this test the woman will know the
gender, blood-type and if there are any
chromosomal mutations that could cause
disabilities such as Downs Syndrome.

4. What do they do with the information?
• Some women choose to abort their babies after
they receive the test results.
• Some women use the information to better
prepare themselves for life with the child.
• Some women will choose to put their child up
for adoption based on the results.

5. Pros
• You can better prepare yourself as a
mother if your child will be born with a
disability
• You can find out the gender in the
early stages of the pregnancy
• If there is a history of a chronic illness,
such as cancer, in your family, the
baby can be tested for it and
treatment to prevent it can start
immediately

6. Cons
• The pregnancy can be terminated if the mother does not like
the results of the testing
• The value of a child with a disability is being degraded
• The woman may look at her child with a disability and think that
it is not perfect

7. Structural Functionalism
• “Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is a
framework for building theory that sees society as a complex
system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and
stability” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural-functionalism)
• NIPT is related to Structural Functionalism because it is taking
away on of the ‘parts’ of society. NIPT is a great exploration and
technology that can be misused and lead to the termination of a
pregnancy or a loss in one of the ‘parts’ of society.

8. Youtube Video
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o79xxEcLwvY

9. The Loves Story
IT rained the day they got the news. Big, pelting drops, as if some screenwriter wellversed in melodrama was dictating the scene. Annie Love couldn't take the call.
She'd been going "slowly nuts" waiting for diagnosis day to arrive and was only just
holding herself together. Her husband, Ben, answered the phone. He nodded. Then he
mouthed the words. "It's positive. Baby has Downs."
They cried. Huge, heaving sobs to rival the rain. In the days and weeks that followed,
they'd pull themselves together, then lose it all over again. And they grieved. This was not
the picture they had of their family.
This baby was meant to be "normal" just like Sam, then 3, and Charlie, then 2. Now the
view had changed, fuelled
by stereotypes: an overweight kid with a bad haircut being teased, a life on the fringes.
But they'd already decided – after many heart-wrenching talks in the preceding four
weeks between suspicious scan and confirming amniocentesis – that they would have the
baby. If he had Down syndrome, they'd paint a new picture.

10. Continued
So they prepared. Grief gave way to a readiness and a joy. Everyone close to them knew
their baby would be born with Down syndrome. Now it was time to get on with it. They
wrote a birth plan. No-one in that delivery room was to be negative. This was their baby and
they were happy. He arrived at 2.55am on March 20, 2012. Nicholas Fenton Angus Love,
3.8kg, 52cm long.
And here he sits on the floor right now, goo-gah-gurgling as he plays with his toy with
gusto. Plump, healthy, with a knockout grin. And "chromosomally enhanced", as his mother
likes to say.
As she looks at Nicholas playing at their home in Gordon Park, on Brisbane's northside, it's
hard for Annie, a Catholic, to admit she considered abortion. So did Ben. "From a
relationship perspective it was probably one of the hardest things we've ever had to go
through," says Annie.
That the Loves decided to have Nicholas after the amniocentesis confirmed Down
syndrome makes them a rarity. Most don't. Only 5.3 per cent of pregnancies where there is a
prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome are continued. This figure comes from a respected
Victorian study, the only (now-defunct) research in Australia that followed the link from
prenatal diagnosis to live births of babies with Down syndrome.

11. Statistics
• genetic testing is said to
increase from 100,000/year to
3 million/year
• 5.3 per cent of pregnancies
with Downs are continued
• about %90 of fetuses with a
diagnosis of Down syndrome
are terminated in New
Zealand, about %92 in the US,
about %93 in the UK.

12. Reasons

13. • “Checking for hundreds or thousands of traits with
one blood test, early in pregnancy, could move
prenatal genetic testing from uncommon to
routine. That possibility challenges all societies to
decide for which ends and by what means they
want such tests to be used, raising hard questions
about, among other things, abortion, disability
rights, eugenics and informed consent” – Henry T.
Greenly

14. References
•
Greely, H. T. (2011). Get ready for the flood of fetal gene screening. Nature,
469(7330), 289-291. doi:10.1038/469289a
•
King, J. S. (2012). Genetic tests: Politics and fetal diagnostics collide. Nature,
491(7422), 33-34. doi:10.1038/491033a
•
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/the-chosen-ones-australiasshrinking-number-of-down-syndrome-kids/story-fnet08ui-1226598360762
•
http://www.medcan.com/services/genetics/non-invasive_prenatal_testing/
•
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexandra-minna-stern/noninvasive-prenataltest_b_2280696.html