The parents with the hardest choice of all

Charles Rodeck is a pioneer in foetal medicine, a field in which huge scientific advances can have a terrible emotional cost. Here he speaks frankly about the painful dilemma - to agree to a termination or take the risk of having a disabled child - which thousands of couples must confront every year

Amelia Hill, Sunday July 15, 2007, The Observer

Sitting ramrod straight in his chair, George Woodall could not be any clearer. 'Cutting to the chase, if there's anything wrong with this baby at any stage, we don't want it,' he tells Professor Charles Rodeck, Britain's leading expert in foetal medicine. 'We want to have all the tests as soon as possible, regardless of how risky they are. We just want this over with.'

Lying on a bed next to her husband, Karen stares at the ceiling in silence. Still dazed by the speed with which her perfect world has begun to crumble around her, all she can think of is how light-hearted she was, two days earlier, when she arrived at her local hospital for her 12-week pregnancy scan.

'Almost as soon as the doctor began the ultrasound, I knew something was terribly wrong,' she told The Observer after her consultation with Rodeck. Within minutes, Karen says, she went from feeling happier than ever to more distressed and confused than she had thought possible. More