Today, up to 200 children are born each year with serious illnesses. It can be cystic fibrosis, muscle diseases or epilepsy.
With knowledge of any genetic defects, the parents themselves will be able to make a choice about whether they can accommodate having a child with a disability, or whether they should get help to have a healthy child with the help of fertility treatment.
This is a proposal from the Danish Society for Genetic Medicine.
– It is not about exterminating people with certain diagnoses or creating the perfect children, but about reproductive autonomy.
– That is, to give people the opportunity to choose and decide for themselves how they want to have children and what they want with their lives, says Laura Kirstine Sønderberg Roos to Berlingske.
She is a ward doctor at the Clinical Genetics Department at Rigshospitalet and represents the Danish Society for Genetic Medicine.
Specifically, the company proposes that prospective parents be offered to have a blood sample analyzed to identify any risks.
Couples in the risk group will then, in connection with a pregnancy, be able to get a genetic test that shows whether the fetus is actually healthy.
The couple will also be able to receive a fertility treatment with egg sorting before a pregnancy.
The proposal receives support from a number of medical companies, patient associations and politicians in the Folketing.
Health spokesperson Stinus Lindgreen (R) believes that the proposal makes “good sense”, but also points out that it puts some difficult ethical considerations down on the parents.
According to the Danish People’s Party’s health spokesperson, Liselott Blixt, a screening offer is “the future”.
It has not been possible for Berlingske to get a comment from Minister of Health Magnus Heunicke (S).