Amniocentesis was not such a bad deal

Recently, my daughter had a slightly problematic reading in her blood and was advised to have an amniocentesis. I was very worried because of what I had read in WDDTY and PROOF! This is what my daughter said about it: ‘You should contact whoever it was who told you the amnio was a horrid procedure and tell them that it is less pain than an injection and it only takes 30 seconds of a needle into the stomach. I hardly felt a thing. This person should not be going around worrying women unnecessarily.’- Joy Manne, Switzerland

WDDTY replies: We have never said that amniocentesis harms the mother. But the scientific evidence shows that it raises the risk of a miscarriage or deformity in the baby. What we are concerned about, as with all areas of medicine, is overuse. Amniocentesis is being offered wholesale to women with very little risk of Down’s syndrome or even those who would not abort a baby found to be ‘defective’.