Abortion Laws and Genome Science

By Center for Reproductive Rights

By Center for Reproductive Rights

Published April 4, 2014, last updated on October 5, 2017 under Voices of DGHI

By Margaret Rote

All my life, I’ve loved science. In fact, one of the main reasons I came to Duke is because they offer a neuroscience major, an area of study that has always fascinated me. However, when I came to Duke, I began to realize there are so many ways to apply science. I knew I wanted to continue my neuroscience studies, but I also began to incorporate other kinds of courses into my schedule like ethics and genome science. Learning in the classroom was a wonderful way to acquire background knowledge for global health and genetic-related issues, but in order to really study these topics, I wanted to become involved in research as well.

I joined the NIPT Bass Connections team this semester and am so thankful for the opportunity to investigate a topic I am passionate about. I have a strong interest in the legal aspects of global health and genome policy, so I am researching abortion laws in various countries. NIPT can reveal fetal health information as early as seven weeks, so in countries with restrictive pregnancy termination laws, NIPT could provide women with a larger time frame to make decisions about terminating their pregnancies.

So, the part of the research I have enjoyed the most has been reading the texts of other countries’ abortion policies (or in some cases translations of these texts). Each country takes a very different approach in writing their policy, resulting in a unique law in every country. Numerous factors such as religion and political ideologies can impact the way these laws are written. Last week, I had the opportunity to interview a reproductive rights expert to ask her opinion about the legal abortion trends worldwide, and she was quick to reinforce the idea that each country has a unique story. As we move forward in the project, I am excited to focus on a specific country, or even small number of  countries, in order to understand in detail what factors have shaped their abortion policy.