From [Australia] news.com:

Pregnant Australian women carrying a fetus with an abnormality are being denied abortions even when the defect is grounds for “non-treatment” after the baby is born, a leading obstetrician warns.

Professor Lachlan de Crespigny from the University of Melbourne, says current Australian abortion laws are discriminatory and inconsistent, especially towards prospective parents who detect an abnormality like Down’s Syndrome or inoperable heart tumors in their unborn child.

Most parents opt to abort if a severe abnormality is found in a test, but Prof de Crespigny says access to the tests and termination varies depending on where they live, the values of the doctor involved and the determination of the woman.

As a result, they are the “forgotten people” in the abortion debate, he argues in the latest Medical Journal of Australia.

The report was co-authored by Prof. Julian Savulescu, an ethicist at the University of Oxford in the UK.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 1:33 pm and is filed under abortion, international, prenatal diagnosis, research news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post