Eugenics is our important national policy.Since the promulgation of the second-child policy, the number of elderly mothers has increased significantly, and the incidence of congenital malformations has increased.Traditional prenatal detection methods have some problems, such as high risk of abortion, low sensitivity, time-consuming etc. It is very important to explore a non-destructive, fast, economical and sensitive prenatal detection method. The common birth defects were introduced and the merits and drawbacks among current most-used prenatal detection methods were compared in this review. The characteristics of spectroscopic technologies, as well as their applications in prenatal testing were summarized.Spectral karyotyping, real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR, SNP allele site analysis, etc. by using fluorescence spectrum analysis method and Raman spectroscopy have been reported in the application of prenatal testing. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), an ultra-sensitive biochemical analytical technology, has been widely used for the detection of biomolecules. The application of SERS spectroscopy in prenatal detection is introduced and prospected.