Prenatal Diagnosis of Down's Syndrome

Abstract

A method was developed for judging the quality of womens' decision making in the field of prenatal diagnosis by measuring the internal consistency of their replies to a series of hypothetical decisions. Seventy-three nonpregnant women were interviewed using a lottery technique to elicit the risks of the birth of a Down's child at which they would request the two main procedures for prenatal diagnosis, amniocentesis and chorionic villus biopsy (CVB). The consistency of their replies was tested by performing a third lottery to elicit at what CVB related abortion risk the subject would choose CVB in preference to aminocentesis. Almost half the subjects were inconsistent, in that their indifference level on this third lottery differed by a factor of two or more from that expected from the first two lotteries.