AMARILLO, TEXAS -- It's a girl! ...or boy, depending on the chromosomes, of course. Either way, those are words most mothers don't expect to hear until at least three months into their pregnancies.
But now, a simple blood test can actually tell anxious mothers-to-be the sex of their child as early as seven weeks in! What's more, researchers found that this type of blood test, at at least seven weeks along, is about 95% accurate.
"You would take a finger stick of your own blood if you were a mother and then send that blood off to be analyzed. But what they're actually doing it detecting very, very small amounts of fetal DNA in the mother's blood", said CEO of Haven Health Clinics, Dr. Ron Barwick.
For some mothers, like Sandy Taylor, finding out her child's sex couldn't come soon enough.
"I wanted to know the gender as quickly as possible and the first time I went for a sonogram, we weren't able to tell. I would definitely want to get that test if I were pregnant again or if they had had it when I was pregnant with my son just because I like to be able to plan ahead and share the news with everybody, my family and friends", said Taylor, mother of her one 6-year-old son.
But when we asked our fans on Facebook how they felt about this test, we got mixed responses. Some said they were excited about the possibility of knowing that early but others speculated that if it's widely used, the test could lead to higher abortion rates -- a controversy we found not only confined to Facebook.
"The danger of course is that sex selection becomes possible. That may be a cultural thing. It may be that people will select sex in other countries based on sex and abort a girl for example", added Barwick.
This same test, we're told, could be a medical breakthrough -- detecting gender specific diseases early on. But, because the test is not widely used by U.S. doctors, the only thing for most soon-to-be mothers to do now, is sit...and wait.
