Who declines antenatal serum screening?
Researchers have examined the characteristics of women who refuse prenatal genetic screening. For one group of 595 women in California, researchers described no significant association between number of previous pregnancies, number of spontaneous miscarriages, or number of live births with a woman’s decision to accept or decline MSAFP (7). These researchers did find an association between ethnicity and test refusal. Spanish-speaking Latinas were almost twice as likely to refuse testing and women who had never terminated a pregnancy were also more likely to refuse testing (7). The effects of religion and religiosity for the same sample were complex. Women raised Catholic or Protestant were equally likely to refuse testing. Both Catholic and Protestant European-American women who scored high on “observant of church teaching on reproduction,” which included agreement with religious teachings on birth control, abortion, when life begins, and extra marital sex, were significantly more likel
