Prenatal screening and pregnant women's attitudes toward the abortion of defective fetuses.
R R Faden,
A J Chwalow,
K Quaid,
G A Chase,
C Lopes,
C O Leonard and
N A Holtzman
We studied the attitudes of 490 pregnant women toward the abortionof defective fetuses. Three hundred of these women were participatingin a prenatal screening program for neural tube defects. Althoughtheoretical accounts of the effects of behavior on attitudewould suggest that participation in a screening program wouldaffect abortion attitudes, evidence in support of such an associationwas weak. The overwhelming majority of women, regardless ofwhether they had participated in the screening program, believedthat women are justified in having an abortion in the face offetal abnormality. There was a sharp increase in the numberof screening program participants who said they would have anabortion when the probability of the fetus being affected witha neural tube defect rose from 95 per cent to 100 per cent.
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