Would you want to know??

Would you want to know?

Here is something I have been thinking about that I truly do not know how I would answer this question, but first let me give you some background…

I am currently 6 months pregnant with my son who is due in April. Prior to conceiving I was offered and agreed to a panel of blood tests that would tell me if I was a carrier of a series of genetic disorders. They all came back negative. Fast forward several months later and I am pregnant and again offered a series of blood and ultrasound tests to assess the chances that the baby I am carrying will have down syndrome and other genetic disorders that they can test for. Again all came back negative. I am certainly relieved that as far as I know I am carrying a healthy baby. But I can’t help but wonder, what about all the disorders and diseases they don’t test for…so here is the question, if there was a test that could tell you that your son or daughter would develop autism (or schizophrenia, or depression, or any other mental or neurological disorder that is currently impossible to test for) would you get the test? To my knowledge no such test exists right now. Now I am not posing the next obvious question of what would you do if it came back positive, as my goal is not to get into a pro-choice vs. pro-life argument. But rather where do we draw the line for too much information?

On one hand I can imagine the pros to this test in that the child could get services from early on and hopefully improve the outcome. But on the other hand, are you then going to treat the child differently and perhaps hinder his/her development because of this expectation.

Anyway, I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to this, just wanted to put it out there.

As always comments and opinions are welcome!