You promise?

A California company is marketing a fetal blood-testing kit which can allow couples to learn the gender of their child up to three weeks earlier than previously possible.

As reported by AP medical writer Lindsey Tanner, Consumer Genetics, Inc., is selling over a thousand kits a year in the United States, allowing couples to discover – with 95% accuracy – the gender of their unborn child as early as seven weeks into the pregnancy (“Boy or girl?” August 15, 2011).

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association expressed concern that such kits might be used in gender selection, thus perhaps increasing abortions of unwanted children. The study suggests, “Couples who buy tests from marketers should be questioned about how they plan to use results.”

Not to worry. Consumer Genetics “won’t test blood samples unless women sign a consent form not to use the results for gender selection.”

That should do it.

Further, fully aware of the apocalypse against female children currently underway in China and India, Consumer Genetics won’t sell their kits to people in those nations “because of fears of gender selection.”

I can’t help but wonder if all this hedging about “gender selection” and these expressions about rising numbers of abortions aren’t a bit disingenuous, if not hypocritical. I rather suspect that the vast majority of the medical and scientific community supports a “woman’s right to choose.” What difference does it make if she chooses to kill her unborn child earlier rather than later?

Surely this is not just a public relations ploy? A bit of posturing designed to head off protests from feminist and pro-life advocates?

I’d like to think that the folks at Consumer Genetics (good grief, what does such a corporate name imply, anyway?) really are concerned only about the positive fetal treatment benefits that can come from early blood tests.

Because I’m not in favor of any medical resources or technologies that make abortion easier or more desirable than it already is.