The Jérôme Lejeune Foundation wants to cancel the analysis of data from prenatal screening. Representatives of specialists see it as a threat to this device.
The Council of State is at the heart of a battle which concerns pregnant women. Its purpose: prenatal screening for trisomy 21. It has been better supervised since May 2016. But this November 4, concerns dominate. Several orders, unions and associations representing pregnancy professionals appeal to the Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine. They ask him to protect Decree and the decree recently adopted. Because the threat looms: the Jérôme Lejeune foundation, openly pro life, seized the state Council. She wants to cancel the texts that modernize access to prenatal screening.
“Hygienic standard”
Against this referral, health professionals are mobilizing. Among the signatories, the president of the Order of Physicians, the Order of Midwives and various colleges specializing in pregnancy monitoring. Everyone is alarmed by the consequences of the seizure made by the Lejeune foundation. This denounces “a national file” relating to screening.
Pregnancy specialists fear a “regression of prenatal medicine” if the Council of State cancels the decree and the order in question. Especially since the position of the foundation pro life is somewhat of a caricature. Far from the “hygienic standard” and “State eugenics” denounced, the texts published in the Official Journal aim to better supervise prenatal screening and to ensure its quality.
Health professionals who perform trisomy 21 detection examinations are invited to communicate the data they have, within a specific framework. Two organizations are responsible for analyzing the results: the Biomedicine Agency, which assesses screening, and the High Authority for Health, which ensures the quality of practices. All while respecting patient confidentiality and data security.
An optional exam
The Lejeune Foundation denounces a series of measures which threaten “the freedom and dignity of many people”. A position that can be contradicted by analyzing the texts, which do not call into question the first principle of prenatal screening. It is offered to all pregnant women but remains optional. As the signatories of this appeal recall, “she remains, above all, free to welcome this child or to terminate the pregnancy”.
Any practitioner who opposes the collection of data can also appeal to his conscience clause. “If he participates, he consequently accepts the de facto evaluation of his practice and contributes to the overall evaluation of screening at the national level”, decide the representatives of the practitioners. The threat to the autonomy of doctors therefore seems virtual.
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