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Another problem here is that a lot of these tests are like injections of anxiety, which is the last thing a pregnant mom needs.

I'm not against "all" testing. I have nothing against pre-pregnancy testing. If there were a family history of Tay-Sachs or something of the sort, I would consider pre-conception testing a matter of --- as you say --- mature responsibility.

Early in the pregnancy, I handed over the blood and urine samples and did the ultrasound like almost all pregnant mothers do. But if I had it to do over again, I would have refused even the AFP test which, with its ambiguous results, prompted the doctor to press me hard for an amnio.

AFP has lots of false positives AND false negatives. It's like having your tea-leaves read by some faintly alarming sorcerer. It only produces an anxiety, an ambivalence, a tentativeness about the pregnancy.

After I had been emotionally manipulated by my first OB/GYN --- on the basis of the AFP --- to talk to a genetic counselor who was then to ring up for an amnio appointment, my husband advised me to think of every question I could possibly ask, write the questions down, and keep asking until I had absolute clarity on the answers.

So I asked this genetics-counselor gentleman what difference it would make if the amnio showed some chromosomal anomaly. He showed me a kind of picture-catalogue of babies with different anomalies, malevolently exhibited --- just splayed like bugs --- and made the assumption I would abort each and every one of them.

I said, in I hope an even tone of voice, that my husband and I were both against abortion, and this suave yet repellent man said, "Both? We could give you a prostaglandin suppository, and you could miscarry, and he would never know. You could act surprised and sad. It IS a miscarriage, as far as we are concerned."

Then I asked, supposing we excluded abortion, how the management of pregnancy or delivery would be different depending on what was found by the amnio. His answer was, "If you go through with childbirth, the pregnancy management wouldn't be any different. Maybe you'd want to deliver at a hospital with a Level III NICU." Which our hospital has anyway.

Then he said he'd be glad to schedule the amnio. I declined. Incredibly, he had the effrontery to argue with me. I gave him another, firm "No."

By the time I got back home I was just fuming. A prostaglandin suppository! There you have it: kill your child; then, cramping and bleeding, you pass his remains into the toilet; AND lie to your husband, in fact, lie repeatedly to everyone you know. Lie to yourself. What a healing experience for the woman! I guess it's about the level of ethics one should expect from these ~~marketers~~ counselors.

I wrote a letter to my then-OB/GYN and the genetics counselor, laid out my case against them, said I didn't want anybody touching me if they didn't want to treat my baby like Jesus Christ, and fired them both. When my husband came home from work, he read it and signed it too.

Our firstborn son? He was born fine. Now 2nd Lt. USMC. Our second son, adopted, multiple birth defects, no less a Child of God.