“Preferred man?” Talk about visiting the sins of the father upon his children! I’m not entirely sure which is more troubling: the idea of a woman using this test to kill her unborn child because he has the “wrong” father, or the nonchalant way the Times raises the possibility.

Some scientific discoveries are timeless in that they transcend their age and cultural setting. For instance, no one thinks that Newton’s laws of motion give us insight into Stuart-era England or that e =mc² tells us anything about life in pre-World War I Europe.

But other discoveries perfectly reflect the tenor of their times. For example, as described in the New York Times, we now have new blood tests that enable pregnant women to identify the father of their unborn child “as early as the eighth or ninth week of pregnancy, without an invasive procedure that could cause a miscarriage.”

In other words, the same technology that helps determine the sex of the unborn child and whether he or she has Down syndrome can now also answer the question, “Who’s your daddy?”

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

But for $1,775, that question can be answered long before the child is born. One manufacturer claims to have sold “thousands” of the tests since they became available last August.

But why exactly do we need such tests?

Well, the New York Times provides the answer: “It is an uncomfortable question that, in today’s world, is often asked by expectant mothers who had more than one male partner at the time they became pregnant. Who is the father?”

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