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.