Actress and comedian, Sally Philips, performed a tremendous service this week with her BBC 2 documentary, ‘A World without Down’s Syndrome’ [1]. She shone a light on the fact that in Britain, nine out of ten children diagnosed in the womb with Down’s Syndrome are aborted. In Iceland, according to the programme, every Down’s Syndrome baby in the womb has been killed in the last five years. That’s right, every last one.
The programme could have pointed out that in Denmark, 98pc of diagnosed Down’s Syndrome babies are aborted. In the US, the figure is 90pc like in Britain. Here in Ireland it seems to be a lot lower. For one thing, abortion is not available under these circumstances in this country, and secondly our social norms still seem to be fairly pro-Down’s Syndrome.
Sally Philips has a Down’s Syndrome child herself, an 11 year old boy named Olly. So she brought a lot of personal experience to the programme. It upsets her that people like Olly are judged by society to have lives not worth living and are better off dead. The programme highlighted the pressure heaped on parents to abort once the doctors discover that their child has Down’s Syndrome.
It also highlighted the way in the routine scanning of pregnant women is ramping up the number of Down’s Syndrome babies who are aborted. Philips is worried that a new test for Down’s Syndrome, which can be offered towards the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, instead of at roughly 20 weeks, is 99pc effective, whereas the one most commonly used now is ‘only’ 85pc effective. This surely means even more Down’s Syndrome babies will be aborted.
She spokes to one doctor who conducts these scans and who seemed to see a Down’s Syndrome child simply as a ‘burden’, and one that is life-long. This, to him, seemed to justify abortion.
Philips was upset by the fact that Olly should simply be seen as a “burden” rather than as a source of joy, which Olly clearly is to her.
The obvious worry is that as genetic screening becomes more and more effective, more and more “imperfect” babies are going to be aborted. What happens if a test is developed for autism, say?
Today we are rightly appalled by the quest for ‘racial purity’ that reached its manic peak during World War II and was pursued in countries with good international reputations like Sweden.
We can now legitimately ask whether the quest for ‘genetic purity’ has replaced the quest for ‘racial purity’? The evidence that it has, is overwhelmingly strong. How else do we explain the fact that so many genetically “imperfect” babies are being aborted today?