Attitudes about abortion of women who undergo prenatal diagnosis.

: Data on 120 women who had experienced either amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and were attending clinics serving women in the Washington, D.C. area or in the San Diego, California area were analyzed to examine their attitudes toward abortion. In-depth, open-ended interviews were also conducted with 24 currently or recently pregnant women who had also undergone a prenatal diagnostic procedure. All the women wanted the pregnancy in question, and all were more wealthy and better educated than the average woman in the US. Yet women who underwent CVS were better educated (completed college, 89.1% vs. 57.2%) and were more affluent (mean household income, $56,000 vs. $46,000) than those who underwent amniocentesis. Women who had CVS encountered difficulties with obtaining access to CVS and, if it were not for their own initiative, they would have not been able to undergo CVS. This emphasized that, due to more economic, educational, or informational resources, they had greater access to prenatal care. It also verified earlier studies identifying a correlation between adoption of innovations and individual resources. 39.5% of CVS users had earlier elected to terminate a previous pregnancy compared with 22.4% of amniocentesis users. Most respondents supported women's freedom of choice to abort a pregnancy for reasons of endangerment to a mother's health (100% for general population, 98.1% for self), rape or incest (98.2% vs. 97.2%), fetal abnormality (99.1% vs. 100%), low income (86.7% vs. 61.2%), and desire to have no more children (81.3%-88.5% vs. 52.5%-74.5%). Yet few women (19.2% vs. 5.3%) approved of abortion based on sex of the fetus. Even though the respondents were committed to abortion rights, they tended to find it personally hard, if not impossible, to terminate a pregnancy now. They spent considerable emotional and financial resources toward the wanted pregnancy, but, by choosing to undergo prenatal diagnosis, were willing to face the possibility of losing the pregnancy.