Prenatal testing in paternity testing: A positive perspective

Abstract Prenatal paternity testing is an area of human identification that raises many ethical questions and is often portrayed in a negative light. In most cases, fetal samples are obtained using invasive techniques and the associated risks to the pregnancy necessitate careful consideration before embarking on such a course of action. Although the risk of miscarriage or other damage to the fetus can be avoided through the use of maternal blood sampling for prenatal diagnosis of paternity, until this form of testing has been shown to be reliable there remains the possibility that it will lead to erroneous termination of pregnancy. We report on two independent cases where doubts had been raised over the quality of results offered after non-invasive tests were performed. Subsequent tests gave different results and, in each case, a planned termination of pregnancy was avoided.