Parental decisions to abort or continue a pregnancy with an abnormal finding after an invasive prenatal test.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the importance of various factors on the decisions whether to terminate or continue a pregnancy after an abnormal result.
METHODS: The decisions of 1467 women who had an abnormal result after an invasive prenatal test were examined according to their religion, the time of diagnosis and the severity of the disorder.
RESULTS: When the examinations were performed by chorionic villus sampling (CVS) among both Jews and non-Jews most of the women opted to terminate the affected pregnancy. After amniocentesis the rate of termination of pregnancy was still very high among cases in which Down syndrome or other significant chromosomal aberrations were diagnosed among Jews. For all the other diagnostic groups either among Jews or non-Jews there was a significant proportion of the cases in which the women decided to continue the pregnancy. A significant exception about the decisions of the couples was in the case of hemoglobinopathy-affected pregnancies among Arabs since both after CVS and amniocentesis many women often decided to continue the pregnancy.
CONCLUSION: The main factor in the decision to terminate or continue the pregnancy is the severity of the disorder diagnosed. However, among Arabs other factors are important, in particular the time at which the diagnosis is made. Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.