Couples are being "forced" to abort genetically defective children, claim healthcare workers in the UK – apparently to pressure the government into expanding funding for pre-natal genetic diagnosis.

Alison Lashwood, a genetics consultant, told the London Telegraph that couples whose children are at risk of inheriting a genetic defect face difficult options if they cannot pay the £7,000 for the test. They can conceive naturally in the hope that their child will be unaffected. If prenatal testing during the pregnancy is positive, they would then "have to have" an abortion, or even raise a child with the disease.

Ms Lashwood said: "There are couples who have not been given funding. For some they will not have children at all, others feel their only option to go ahead with a pregnancy and they have had another affected child, or they have had prenatal testing and have had a termination."

She told the media that one couple was refused funding even though they had lost one child at birth to a severe chromosomal abnormality. Because they could not access PGD, they had two other babies with exactly the same condition.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the lobby group CORE, told the BBC: "We should not be in the business of making judgements about what is a life worth living and what isn't at any stage of the process."

Part of the problem lies in the National Health Service bureaucracy. Professor Peter Braude, of Kings College, London, says that officials confuse PGD with fertility treatment and refuse to fund couples who already have children. In some cases the couple have a disabled child who will die early in life and are still refused PGD funding.

PGD is still rare in the UK. In 2006 46 babies were born after being screened with PGD compared with 12,589 babies born after IVF treatment. More lobbying from fertility clinics could make it more popular. ~ London Telegraph, Apr 22