Devan Weathers learned her unborn baby girl would have Down syndrome over a phone call taken in a parking lot, on her lunch break.
“It may not have even been a two-minute phone call,” said Weathers, 32, who lives just outside of Lexington, Ky. “I hung up the phone and started crying in the parking lot at work, all by myself.”
After getting her test results, Weathers was certain she wouldn’t terminate her pregnancy, but she didn’t entirely accept it, either — and she had no guidance from the medical community to help her.
“Nobody offered anything. Nobody told me about any resources,” said Weathers, who only received the services of a genetic counselor once she was in the delivery room. “I had to do all of that on my own.”
Read the full, original story here: As Prenatal Testing For Down Syndrome Increases, So Do Concerns About Counseling
Additional Resources:
- “The next big thing in pregnancy: Sequencing your baby’s genome,” CNN
This article weighs some of the pros and cons of noninvasive prenatal testing.
- “Will Gattaca Come True?,” Slate
Learn more about the earliest noninvasive prenatal tests, first spurred on by the finding that a pregnant woman’s blood contains a small amount of fetal DNA. - Noninvasive prenatal testing, Mayo Clinic
The Mayo Clinic’s website provides practical, applied information about noninvasive prenatal testing.
