Prenatal paternity tests encouraging infidelity among women

London, January 29: Women, who indulge in extra marital affairs in United Kingdom, are increasingly opting for prenatal paternity tests to find out ‘who’s the father of my child’, so as to terminate babies that happen to be their lovers’.

Dan Leigh, the marketing director of DNA Solutions, an international DNA test firm, noted that the number of women opting for the prenatal paternity test has gone up from 20 in 2002 to 500 last year.

"It's fairly common to see women take this test after their husbands have found out about an affair and want to know if they have fathered the child their wife is carrying," he says.

DNA tests’ ability to determine sex or paternity and its easy accessibility has made it an easy choice for women to use the technology profusely to terminate unwanted pregnancy every now and then, often to conceal their infidelity towards their spouses.

Recently, in a High Court hearing, it was discovered that, for 17 years, a girl named Elspeth Chapman was kept in the dark about the fact that the man, with whom she had been living, was not his biological father.

Estimates also reveal that, in Britain, one in every 25 husbands unknowingly is raising another man’s child.

Certainly, these statistics draw criticism for DNA testing on ethical grounds, as it seems to be encouraging pregnancy termination and emerging as an easy option to hide betrayals and avoid attached stigma.

Activists argue that the DNA testing technology, in a way, is supporting infidelity in marital relationships.

Leigh defended DNA testing saying, “75 percent of the cases involve women coming in of their own volition; they want to know whose child they are carrying,”

“It's a sad situation, it often ends either in divorce or the husband insists on terminating the pregnancy," Leigh laments.

The debates will continue, whether technology or weak relationship encourages marital infidelity, but the fact that technology is often more abused than used remains certain.