The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to start discussions this fall on issues related to the so-called new type of prenatal diagnosis, in which blood tests are performed on pregnant women to detect possible chromosome abnormalities such as Down syndrome in their fetuses. The move follows recent rifts between medical organizations over a plan to ease the conditions on institutions that can perform such tests, the results of which can impose on pregnant women and their families the grave choice of whether or not to give birth.

Through the discussions at the health ministry panel of experts, the government needs to take the lead in clearing any confusion over the tests. The discussions are also hoped to address the question of how society should deal with this rapidly developing medical technology that entails possible ethical questions. Concern lingers that a widespread use of the tests could lead to the exclusion of people born with chromosome abnormalities.

When the new type of prenatal diagnosis was introduced in Japan in 2013, medical institutions that could perform the tests were limited under voluntary rules to about 90 hospitals nationwide certified by the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences as being capable of offering sufficient counseling by experts in genetic medicine to pregnant women and their families about the tests and decisions they would make on the basis of the results. That was based on the thinking that the women and the family need to make fully informed decisions on whether to take the test in the first place and what to do with the results. The tests were also limited to women who became pregnant at age 35 or older and those who had earlier been pregnant with fetuses with chromosome abnormalities.