Blood Test Reveals Unborn Baby's Sex as Early as 7 Weeks: Ethical or Unethical?

Do you think that this is ethical or unethical?  If this test was just being used to find out the sex of the unborn baby earlier than before and there weren't any other motivations behind the test I would say that it is alright but I fear that this test is going to be used in an unethical manner.

From Bioedge, a bioethicist named Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania stated:

“Few will argue that finding out early in a pregnancy if a male fetus has a fatal form of muscular dystrophy or Rett Syndrome -- a nervous disorder that causes males to die in utero -- would be beneficial to many families. But outside of that kind of testing, everything about the early testing of fetal genes for sex identification spells ethical trouble. And, as the techniques for the analysis of fetal DNA become more and more accurate and affordable, it is likely to reshape the debate over abortion.” ~ New York Times, Aug 10; MSNBC, Aug 9

I hope that Caplan isn't hinting in his first sentence that abortion should be an option if the baby is found to have Rett Syndrome. It is evil and immoral to kill an innocent human being. I hope that instead he is indicating that it is better for the parents to know that their baby may have an awful disease so that they can prepare.

 

I believe that in most cases this test is going to be used unethically. 

Dr. O. Carter Snead Speaks on "Nature of Equality" and "Perversion of Equality"

These are excerpts from a talk on "Equality as a Foundational Good in American Public Bioethics." The talk took place at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and was sponsored by the Institute of Bioethics. 






Now that you have seen excerpts from Dr. Snead's talk and I have given you an idea of what the whole talk is on are you interested in hearing the entire talk?  If so, I will post the entire talk tomorrow.