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Health Check: Genetic disorders and US abortion bans

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Pregnant woman lying down

2022/11/16 GMT

Genetic disorders and US abortion bans

BBC World Service - Health Check, Genetic disorders and US abortion bans

How US abortion bans are impacting women whose unborn babies show inherited disorders

Inherited disease and abortion bans; leprosy and regenerating organs; cholera in Lebanon; smells and good sleep

Ayoka from Atlanta, Georgia in the US is desperate to have a baby and her family is helping to pay for her IVF treatment. But Ayoka knows that she carries a serious genetic condition, Fragile X, which she does not want to pass on to her children. She tells Claudia Hammond what it means to know that she would be prevented from having an abortion, even if pre-natal testing revealed her unborn baby had the inherited condition. That is because the state of Georgia, up until yesterday when the ban was successfully challenged in court, has restricted termination after six weeks of pregnancy. This restriction is too early for genetic testing to have taken place. So what will she do if the ban is reinstated?

Lebanon has experienced profound economic, financial and civil shocks in recent years as well as absorbing almost a million and a half refugees, a third of its total population. The strains on its infrastructure are acute and for the first time in almost thirty years, there have been outbreaks of cholera, claiming lives of young and old alike, just as there is a global shortage of cholera vaccines. Lebanon’s Minister of Public Health, Dr Firass Abiad, tells Claudia about the steps that are being taken to treat, vaccinate and restore vital infrastructure to stop the disease spreading.

And the BBC’s Science and Health correspondent, James Gallagher, brings the latest medical findings, including how armadillos showed that the leprosy bacterium can regenerate organs, how children’s different births cause different microbiomes and different reactions to vaccinations and which smells give you a better night’s sleep.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producer: Fiona Hill

(Photo: A pregnant woman lying down. Credit: Brooke Fasani Auchincloss/Getty Images)

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