In what's described as "huge news" (from a study in Ireland), I see that early prenatal testing for Downs Syndrome has been developed, allowing pregnant women to detect this genetic horror in the first trimester:

WASHINGTON - A first-trimester screening test can reliably identify fetuses likely to be born with Down syndrome, providing expectant women with that information much earlier in a pregnancy than current testing allows, according to a major study being released today.

The study of more than 38,000 U.S. women found that the screening method, which combines a blood test with an ultrasound exam, can pinpoint many fetuses with the common genetic disorder 11 weeks after conception. That allows women to decide sooner whether to undergo the riskier follow-up testing needed to confirm the diagnosis.

"This is a big deal for women. It's going to have a big impact on care for women, not just in the United States but throughout the world," said Fergal Malone of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, who led the study in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Screening women before the second trimester allows those who might opt to terminate a pregnancy to make that decision when an abortion is safer and less traumatic.

Whether anyone likes it or not, most people see the morality of abortion as directly related to the age of a fetus.

Or embryo.

I do not doubt that as testing grows more sophisticated, it might become possible to detect the Downs chromosomal abnormality even at the blastomere stage. Whether it is immoral to refuse to carry a Downs embryo to full term can be the subject of debate, but I don't think most people think of blastomeres as human beings, and I doubt they ever will.

Why this is called a "Culture War" I am not sure.

I suppose I'd have to be a woman who didn't want to give a Downs embryo nine long months in my womb in order to find out.

But would it be "genocide" for individual mothers to decide to abort such embryos? There are probably some advocacy groups which would say so (manufacturers of RU-486 have been likened to Nazis), but I don't see how individual decisions can be considered genocide absent any organizing force.

But then, I have the right to be wrong.