Bigotry against Babies with Down Syndrome: International Experiences
by Sarah Terzo
Recently, the CLN Blog published an article about discrimination against people with Down syndrome and how it leads to abortion. The article looked at cases from the United States, but the same thing happens in other countries.
Writer Says She Would Have Aborted Her Children
If They Had Down Syndrome
An author in the Washington Post expressed the mindset of a parent who would abort a child with Down syndrome. Ruth Marcus wrote:
I can say without hesitation that, tragic as it would have felt and ghastly as a second-trimester abortion would have been, I would have terminated those pregnancies had the testing come back positive. I would have grieved the loss and moved on…
I’m going to be blunt here: That was not the child I wanted… You can call me selfish, or worse, but I am in good company.
Parents of children with Down syndrome condemned the article, but Marcus is correct that she’s in “good company.”
Abortion for Down Syndrome in Iceland
In Iceland, nearly all children with Down syndrome are aborted.
A CBS News article quoted Helga Sol Olafsdottir, who “counsels” Icelandic women whose preborn babies test positive for Down. When Olafsdottir encounters a woman who is wrestling with her decision, or feels guilty about aborting, she tells her, “This is your life — you have the right to choose how your life will look like.”
The baby’s life isn’t considered.
Olafsdottir showed the CBS reporter a prayer card memorializing an aborted baby who had Down syndrome. The card had tiny ink footprints from the baby. The parents kept the card as a keepsake of their child.
The reporter said, “In America . . . some people would be confused about people calling this ‘our child,’ saying a prayer or saying goodbye or having a priest come in — because to them abortion is murder.”
Olafsdottir responded, “We don’t look at abortion as a murder,” but as “preventing suffering for the child and for the family.”
Down syndrome is not a painful condition. In one survey, 99% of people with Down said they were happy with their lives. But Down syndrome requires parents to make sacrifices for their children. Some parents simply aren’t willing to make those sacrifices.
Abortion for Down Syndrome in Australia
In Australia, 93% of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. Australian parents who chose life report being pressured to choose abortion.
On the program Lateline, Kathleen Simpkins says that when her doctor first suspected her preborn baby had Down syndrome, he “went into a spin.” She says, “I think he might even have been shaking when he said to me, ‘I’m so glad you came back. I’ve been trying to get hold of you, you’ve had an abnormal scan and your window for termination is closing.’”
She and her husband Andrew had decided in advance not to abort if their child had Down. Other parents, Andrew says, may have given in:
I can imagine that with the amount of negative advice we were given, that it would be hard to go through with the pregnancy, because it’s just so negative.
The outcome is shown to be so sad and awful that you wouldn’t want to go through with it. I’d say most of the obstetricians that we saw… [abortion] always came up in one way or another…
It’s one of those mind-blowing things that you can’t really believe it’s real, you can’t believe that these children really are being looked at as almost like a byproduct.
During the interview, Kathleen cried as she described how doctors treated her family. (The video at the site which shows this and the above quotes has been taken down)
Rebecca Kelly, the mother of a son with Down syndrome herself, did a survey of Australian mothers who chose life after their preborn babies were diagnosed.
Sixty percent said doctors delivered the diagnosis in a manner that was “poor or very poor and contained negative language, such as ‘I’m sorry, it’s bad news.'”
Two-thirds said doctors offered them abortion again after they declined it. One fifth said they were offered abortions repeatedly, despite telling their doctors they wanted their children. In these cases, doctors didn’t take no for an answer.
Live Action News covered the story of one Australian mother, Joelle Kelly.
At 13 weeks, doctors told Joelle and her husband that their preborn daughter Josee was in heart failure and wouldn’t survive. They suggested abortion. The couple refused. A week later, Josee was diagnosed with Down syndrome.
The doctors offered to arrange an abortion within 48 hours. Again, the couple refused.
Over the next few weeks, doctors repeatedly told the Kellys that Josee would die. At every appointment, they were told abortion was the right decision because there was no hope for their baby’s survival.
But at 19 weeks, the doctors discovered there was nothing wrong with the Josee’s heart after all—the potential problems had resolved.
Kelly says:
[W]hen she looked like her heart was ok . . . we imagined we wouldn’t receive any more coercion about abortion from medical professionals.
We were wrong.
At every weekly appointment from 19 weeks to 23 weeks, we were asked if we were sure we wanted to proceed with her pregnancy.
We were even told that “these things happen” in second marriages and asked if Lewis and I were a second marriage.
There was a local organization that supported and advocated for families of children with Down syndrome. This group offers resources and support to parents. However, doctors never told the couple about the group or the support available to them.
According to Joelle, “Not once were we given information about Down syndrome, not once . . . Despite me pleading for information, we were told to go home and Google her diagnosis.”
The doctor who asked the couple if they were on their second marriage turned out to be the one who delivered Josee.
Joelle says, “Once Josee was born she was smitten . . . Every time we saw her after she was intrigued by our Josee Hope . . . because the obstetricians that we encountered didn’t have a lived experience of the condition.”
It is easier to dehumanize disabled people and discriminate against them if one doesn’t know any disabled people personally.
Kelly now advocates for children with Down syndrome and their families. In her original Facebook post, she said:
I could have ended [Josee’s] life easily because abortion was at EVERY turn, and because I was made to feel like it was the right thing to do . . . by the same professionals that should have been objectively informing me and providing optimal prenatal clinical care.
Abortion for Down Syndrome in Great Britain
Abortion rates for babies with Down syndrome are also very high in Great Britain. An older study in the journal Prenatal Diagnosis found that 92% of British babies diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb are aborted. A more recent BBC article gave the figure of 90%.
One British woman gave her reasons for aborting her child with Down syndrome:
I knew I didn’t want to bring a child into the world with those sorts of problems, and from a selfish point of view, my life would have been over. I would have ended up as a full-time carer . . .
The only thing I’ve been upset about since is that I haven’t got pregnant again. But neither of us have had a second of regret . . .
But some British mothers are speaking out against such ableist attitudes. British actress Sally Phillips, whose son Olly, now 12, has Down syndrome, was interviewed by the BBC.
Unlike many mothers, Phillips didn’t find out that Olly had Down syndrome until after he was born. According to her, “The doctor said to us: ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ The nurse on duty cried. I don’t think anyone said anything at all positive. It wouldn’t have been any different if they’d told me my child wasn’t going to make it.”
Medical professionals, Phillips says, treated Olly’s birth like it was a tragedy.
But life with Olly, she says, is far more like a comedy. According to Phillips, “It’s like a sitcom, where something appears to go wrong but there’s nothing bad at the end of it . . . Having Olly in my life has changed me and my family for the better.”
Phillips describes Olly as kind and “gifted emotionally.” He notices when people are upset and always offers them comfort. Of her three children, Olly is the one who asks her “every single day” how her day was.
Aborting Because of a Down Syndrome Diagnosis Is Ableism
Prenatal testing can’t determine a child’s personality, their unique gifts and talents, or what they have to offer the world. All it can do is identify one thing about the child—their medical condition—and even that information is limited and sometimes wrong.
A test for Down syndrome may show whether a child has the condition, but it doesn’t reveal how severely the child will be affected, nor does it say anything about how much love that child has to give or what joy they can bring to their loved ones.
A disability is only one characteristic of a person—it is not their entire identity. Reducing a complex human being to a medical diagnosis is ableism. No preborn child, indeed, no human, should be sentenced to death for being disabled.
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For more of our posts on disability rights, see:
Bigotry against Babies with Down Syndrome
A Lawyer’s Turnaround on Baby Doe with Her Own Down Syndrome Baby
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
How Ableism Led (and Leads) to Abortion
Abortion and People with Disabilities
Women with Disabilities Speak</a
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