Women Pressured into Aborting Down’s Syndrome Babies

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that some women in the UK are being pressured by doctors into aborting their Down's Syndrome babies.

Lisa Green could hardly wait to give birth to her second child. The images from her eight-month scans were showing a fully formed baby weighing more than 7lb. With the excitement and anticipation familiar to any expectant parent, she and her husband Tim had already chosen a name for their unborn son.

"Then the doctor said, 'I have some bad news – your baby has Down's syndrome'," recalls Mrs Green, 35, a part-time administrator from Margate, in Kent.
 
After a complicated pregnancy, during which the doctors had found that Mrs Green was carrying excess amniotic fluid, the couple had agreed that their baby could be tested for genetic conditions. "We were both in total shock, but this was considerably worsened when he said, 'You can have a termination.' I was 35 weeks' pregnant at this stage. My baby was fully formed and his name was decided. I was appalled.

"He urged us to think about the termination and think about how having a baby with 'mental retardation' would affect our lives. He listed only the potential negatives about Down's syndrome, without giving us any information to read for a more balanced view. The midwife tried to interject and offer us some leaflets, but he talked her down."

Mrs Green decided to go ahead with the pregnancy and, two weeks later, gave birth to Harrison – a little brother for their first child, Sam, who is now five. Harrison Green is now two years old and has just started nursery part-time. He is, according to his mother, a "happy and healthy" child.

But thousands of other unborn children diagnosed with Down's suffer a different fate. According to new research by the Down's Syndrome Association, Mrs Green is not alone in her experience.

Many pregnant women whose babies are diagnosed with the condition by an NHS screening programme are being actively encouraged to have late abortions. Since its launch in 2003, the screening service has been offered to all 760,000 women who fall pregnant in the UK every year, at an estimated cost to the NHS of £15,300 per Down's syndrome pregnancy detected.
. . .
Those fears now appear to have become a disturbing reality. Nuala Scarisbrick, a trustee of Life, the pro-life organisation, said that the offer of late terminations for Down's babies was a case of "overt eugenics". She added: "There are human rights for everybody unless you are disabled in some way, it seems."

In recent years, advances in medical screening and the associated rise in the number of terminations (about 185,000 are performed every year in the UK) have led to a number of critics condemning the rising tide of "abortion on demand".
. . .
Although children with Down's syndrome who also have an untreated heart condition are unlikely to survive into their teens, a child with no other health problems can expect to live up to the age of 60. Many children with the condition can, like Harrison, lead happy and fulfilled lives.

"We don't know what we'd do without him – he's so adored," says Mrs Green. "The frightening thing is that, had we been told by the same doctor about the Down's syndrome earlier in the pregnancy, there is a chance we might have decided to abort. That decision would have been based on incomplete and biased information."

But by the time of diagnosis, the Greens already knew that their feelings about their son were unconditional. In the end, the couple decided to act on biased information of their own: love.