Even Utah Doctors Encourage Abortion Based on Unreliable Prenatal Tests

Aubrey Wursten
11/14/2020

Credit: Lakia Hinson on Pixy

An expectant mother who is told by her OB/GYN that her unborn baby has complications often faces pressure to abort. The pressure might come from friends or family, but shockingly, it also frequently comes from the doctor.

Why is this shocking? Because the tests are often wrong. One study found that 15% of abortions performed due to likely fetal abnormalities resulted from inaccurate tests. And if mothers in Utah assume that their doctors in this largely conservative state would never suggest abortion based on faulty tests, they should prepare for another unpleasant surprise:

It happens here.

Expectant mothers place themselves and their unborn children in the care of maternal fetal medicine specialists, most of whom are competent and trustworthy. But no matter how capable, doctors here and elsewhere are human and vulnerable to error, and they are also victims of their own biases and misunderstanding. (For a startling example, see this analysis of an op-ed and a lawsuit brought by several of them in Utah.)

Add to that the imperfect technology that they use to make decisions, and you can see that mothers need to do their own research instead of blindly following even a trained professional.

Screening Is Not Diagnosing

One major problem is that mothers may not understand that much of the testing being done falls into the screening category, not the diagnostic. Screening tests merely determine if your baby is more likely than average to have a certain abnormality, and the results should never be taken as an actual diagnosis of a problem.

As a study in the New England Journal of Medicine notes, “Quirks in a mom’s DNA can alter...test results, leading parents — and even their doctors — to believe their babies have major disorders when they are, in fact, healthy. Although the error average differs from test to test, bear in mind that even a 5% false positivity rate (the estimated rate in the common Down Syndrome screening) leads to an enormous number of false positives over the general population.

Unfortunately, whether due to lack of communication or unconscious bias on the part of the physician, mothers do not always realize how fallible screening tests are. For example, the American Pregnancy Association merely notes that “screening tests have a greater chance of being wrong,” which one could argue downplays just how unreliable many of them are.

Furthermore, they go on to encourage screening for some conditions to all mothers in the first trimester. This in itself may not be a problem, but coupled with the misunderstanding of the term screening, this is obviously likely to result in a large number of mothers feeling pressure to choose abortion for a child who does not actually have the condition. And considering that some OB/GYNs (including those in Utah) work with organizations that profit from providing abortions, a conflict of interest obviously exists, even if it is subconscious.

Diagnosis Isn’t Perfect, Either

First, it should be noted that some diagnostic tests are more invasive than screening tests, and these run the risk of causing fetal or maternal injury in a pregnancy that was previously healthy. Although the risk is small, it adds up to a very large one over an entire population, and it is certainly significant to every mother and child who are injured.

Next, patients need to realize that even these more sensitive tests can result in inaccurate diagnoses. Sometimes, the findings are absolutely wrong, and parents find out too late that they have chosen abortion for a perfectly healthy child. But even more often, doctors inaccurately gauge the severity of the condition present, and parents base their decision on an exaggerated idea of the actual problem. In other words, doctors often believe a child will not be able to survive or will have devastating abnormalities, when the actual condition may be much more minor.

Consider that one study found that the false-positive rate of a combination of certain fetal diagnostic tests was 8.8%, and the rate of diagnostic misclassification was 9.2%. If abortion is often done as a result of a devastating fetal diagnosis, as many abortion-supporting doctors claim, then it cannot be denied that many of these abortions are being performed on mothers who would have chosen to keep their babies if they had known the truth.

But Aren't These Tests Good?

Many herald fetal diagnostic tests as a welcome advancement in medicine, and indeed, they can be. In some instances, they allow for prenatal surgery to correct abnormalities, and in others, they may at least give parents time to prepare for a child that is likely to have special needs.

Unfortunately, like many scientific advancements, they have also been trusted more than is wise, and they are far too often used to promote the abortion industry, justify killing the unborn, and leave post-abortive parents to live with the question: What if my screening was wrong?

We are here to add: What if it was right? What if your child did have a condition that would have taken their life at some point? What if your child did have Down Syndrome? When does anyone have the authority to decide when to end the life of another? This is the role of God alone.

Here at Pro-Life Utah, we believe education empowers women to choose life. Please consider making a donation so we can keep writing articles like these. Or, to see the other ways we work to empower women and their babies, see a list of our available resources.

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