Prenatal diagnosis: What is the law?

- That the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family; or
- That the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; or
- That the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated; or
- That there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.1
- The legal test for whether PGD for a specific disorder meets the statutory requirements is: ‘that there is a significant risk that a person with the abnormality will have or develop a serious physical or mental disability, a serious illness or any other serious medical condition’.2 While ‘seriousness’ is at the heart of the issue this does not necessarily mean ‘untreatable’. For example, PGD is approved for BRCA1/2.
- PGD is only permitted for sex-selection, where there is a sex-linked disorder.3
- PGD is approved for tissue typing of so-called saviour siblings, where no other donor exists. Such cases are approved on a case-by-case basis.4
1 Abortion Act 1967 as amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, s1
2 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 c.22 1ZA (2)(1)(b)
3 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 c.22 1ZA(1)(c)
4 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 c.22 1ZA(1)(d)
The Genomics Era: the Future of Genetics in Medicine

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