# Down’s syndrome abortions to be banned after 24 weeks
**MPs from all parties are expected to back Sir Liam Fox’s proposal to ban terminations up to birth for babies with the condition**
MPs from all the main parties have backed changes to the law that would abolish rules allowing abortions up to the point of birth for a foetus diagnosed with Down’s syndrome.
An amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill being tabled by Sir Liam Fox, a former cabinet minister, would bring the law in line with the 24-week abortion limit for foetuses with no “serious disabilities”.
He said the change in the law would stop people with Down’s syndrome being treated as second-class citizens, a situation he described as an “absolutely utter travesty”.
The most recent abortion statistics published by the Department of Health and Social Care revealed that there were 859 abortions involving a baby diagnosed with Down’s syndrome in 2021, up by a quarter from the previous year.
Fox’s amendment has already been backed by a string of MPs from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Democratic Unionist Party.
It will be debated and voted on as part of passage of the Criminal Justice Bill, which is expected to return to the Commons after MPs return for the Easter recess on April 15.
Fox, a former GP and former defence secretary, will argue that the current law is contradictory to the Equality Act 2010, which defines discrimination as when a person discriminates against another because of a protected characteristic.
He hopes his campaign to change the law will get a crucial boost on Wednesday as he will ask Rishi Sunak to give his own support to the amendment at prime minister’s questions.
Fox told The Times: “There is considerable cross-party support to remove an anomaly in UK law which allows those with Down’s syndrome to be aborted up until 40 weeks. Many of us believe this is utterly against the purpose of our equality legislation and treats those with Down’s syndrome as second-class citizens when it comes to their rights.
“My amendment would remove an anomaly which many were not aware even existed and send a signal about the values that we share across the political system in our country.”
The campaign group Don’t Screen Us Out has argued that the information and advice offered to pregnant woman who are expecting a baby with Down’s syndrome is biased towards opting for an abortion.
A woman can terminate her pregnancy for a foetus with no screened medical conditions before 24 weeks. However, the 1967 Abortion Act allows a woman to terminate her pregnancy up to 40 weeks for a baby that will have Down’s syndrome.
A woman with Down’s syndrome lost a legal bid to change the law in November 2022. Heidi Crowter, then 27, argued that the rules were discriminatory against people with the condition and the legislation “doesn’t respect my life”.
Fox’s bid to change the law is the latest in a long campaign to boost the rights of people with Down’s syndrome.
In 2022 he successfully pushed through groundbreaking new laws to recognise the condition as a specific ministry group, which required councils and public bodies such as schools, NHS organisations, social care services and job centres to meet the specific needs of people with the condition for the first time.
The legislation empowers families to challenge authorities that are not acting on their duties.
Fox argued that the changes were urgently needed because life expectancy for people with the condition has rapidly increased, meaning many are outliving their parents. He warned that the status quo was leading to an increasing number of adults with Down’s syndrome whose parents have died being placed in “inappropriate institutions”.
It is now far more likely that someone with Down’s syndrome outlives their parents as life expectancy is between 50 and 60 in the UK, more than double the age that it was in the 1980s, the last time the law was changed.
This seems like a very misleading headline. Fox is attempting to change the law but there it is not currently in motion. the extent of the question asked in PM questions
“Liam Fox (Con) says tomorrow is world’s Down’s syndrome day. He says abortion for Down’s syndrome is allowed up to 40 weeks. Will the PM back changing this so that it is in line with the normal abortion limit?
Sunak says when parliament legislated for abortion, it said doctors should be able to make decisions in difficult cases. He says votes on these issues have always been conscious matters.”
There is little reason for this. Down Syndrome, frankly, is a situation we cause ourselves. We know how to test for it and abort it. Iceland doesnt have any (bar2/3 a year) people with the syndrome.
I get that people get emotional about this. And there are some people who live happy lives with the syndrome. But frankly if we all just grew up on easily noticeable, lifelong diseases we can figure out in the womb we’d all be better off.
Its like the mothers who know their baby will never be able to walk or talk or move but dont abort anyway. Causing the poor kid to suffer for 6 years rolling in his own shit before succumbing.
Life is cruel. Dont be an asshole. Abort when its medically necessary.
Edit: Correction iceland has 2-3 unfortunate cases per year. But thats very very low.
It’s been a while so things might have changed, but as I recall it the testing for downs syndrome can be a risk to the unborn baby up until way late in the pregnancy.
Will this not then cause more deaths than lives it saves?
We had a late identified risk for one of ours (rather a high risk), but by then we were all in on keeping the baby, and the test was for us just to make sure the right people were in the room for the birth.
People aren’t having enough kids, let’s make it even risker they may end up with a child that needs care for the rest of their life, that should make it more attractive, especially with how we’ve decimated the NHS and care services.
High functioning Down’s syndrome people are always the ones featured in tv advertisements, magazine articles, photoshoots.
The ones who cannot function by themselves, who keep their parents (usually their mothers) basically housebound and impoverished their entire lives because they cannot be left by themselves even when they’re 45 years old and will never be able to have the slightest hint of independence, are never featured.
And Liam Fox and his party have ensured these people are basically left to fend for themselves.
Down’s syndrome is not some cutesy little disease that produces ‘simple but happy’ people.
And now the chipping away continues. Back to the kitchen and leave them shoes off. You ain’t going anywhere
I don’t know enough on this to have an informed option but seeing the Tories meddling in any way with the abortion laws give me the fear.
I would be very interested to hear how many abortions there have been for DS over 24 weeks in the last few years.
98% of abortions happen before 17 weeks (so the number after 24 weeks must be miniscule)
1.2% were carried out on the grounds of severe handicap – and that includes all medical conditions, from anencephaly to Down Syndrome
The NHS offers Down Syndrome testing at the 12 week scan, so in almost all cases they’ll have enough time to know and decide before 24 weeks.
My guess is that late abortion for Down Syndrome is vanishingly rare, to the point of being able to count them annually on the fingers of one hand and still have fingers left to spare.
Edit: I did a deep dive into the statistics, and there were 24 post-24 weeks abortions of foetuses with Down Syndrome in 2021, out of a total of 503 post 24 week abortions for medical reasons, and 214,256 abortions in total.
Why the focus on something that’s 0.011% of the total abortions? Because it’s a Trojan horse for wider abortion restrictions.
Yeah I’m sorry I’m just done with this shit from both America and Britain, you don’t get the right to dictate to a woman what she does with her body, or the child in her womb, its her fucking choice, she’s the one who goes through it, regardless of what either me or you agree with, it’s none of our God damn business
And this will be accompanied by a massive increase in support for parents who have children with Down’s Syndrome right?
Should have known Liam Fox was behind this.
The man doesn’t have a thought in his head unless it was inserted in there by the American christian right.
Accompanied with a massive wedge of cash.
I had a little brother with Edwards’ syndrome. I loved him to bits. He died at 3. He never spoke, walked, even crawled.
I don’t think it’s paradoxical to say that I’m both grateful we had the time with him, and that it’d have been better if he hadn’t been born. I don’t want our time with him undone, but I don’t want others to suffer a life like that in the future.
I’ve been told, by someone who never had to bury a 3 year old, that this view is how the Nazis thought. I don’t really give a shit anymore. Life shouldn’t be pain, and his life most certainly was. If we can prevent it from happening painlessly and before development, we should.
Where’s the woman with the list (the list of reasons women should never get pregnant).
I’d love to have children one day but I’ll be adopting and the more and more questionable abortion laws and women’s rights laws change I feel like it’s the right decision. I’d become feral if there were laws controlling what I did with my own body.
If they’re going to do that they need to provide WAY more support to people with the syndrome and their families.
Question. Recently, I took a call from my neurologist explaining that my epilepsy medication will now most likely cause neurological disorders in my children if I decide to have any. Under these circumstances, would I be legally allowed to terminate a pregnancy with a spouse?
Do we want abortion or not?
If you allow one caveat, more caveats are guaranteed to follow.
This is a major step backwards for women’s bodily autonomy.
This is terrifying. I’m someone who has had a termination for a baby just prior to the limit. I didn’t make my choice lightly and it isn’t something any mother chooses lightly.
In my case, my baby had neural tube defects and wasn’t growing as she should. I terminated because the alternative was potentially my baby dying after birth or dying inside me. It’s unlikely she would have survived and if she did, she probably wouldn’t have had a decent quality of life.
Had my baby had a less severe form of a neural tube defect, I wouldn’t have terminated. I wouldn’t have terminated had the prognosis been anything other than awful. I probably wouldn’t have terminated had my situation been better either. As it was, I would have been a single mother with little to no family support in a minimum wage job, a crappy flat and no support taking care of my baby. It wouldn’t have been doable with a severely disabled baby.
Judgements and lawa like this put the ball in motion for the banning of abortion, or banning abortion in cases like mine. Down’s isn’t a death sentence, however the odds of the child being able to lead a relatively independent life are fairly limited. They don’t allow mothers to make a decision based on the reality of their life as it stands and whether they can support that child.
It also fails to consider that babies born to mothers forced into this situation may be resented. That has a tremendously negative impact on your wellbeing.
What is being totally missed in this discussion is the current law doesn’t specify DS as a reason to terminate after 24 weeks, it just allows for termination after 24 weeks at the discretion of doctors and their patients if the foetus has a serious abnormality / disability. There is no list of ‘conditions where abortion is allowed after 24 weeks’
What this proposes is to *single out* Down syndrome as a disability drs are legally not allowed to perform a termination for after 24 weeks, which is a worrying first step to legally restrict women’s abortion rights.
It also does not make sense in practice, e.g. heart abnormalities may be grounds for late termination, and these could occur in a down syndrome or non-down syndrome fetus. Would women then be forced to carry to term the DS fetus but not the one that didn’t have it?
Are they going to vote to put more money into care homes, or force private providers to raise their standard of care. Most care homes are shit holes and a lot of people with downs end up in one. ive seen it so many times, the parents get too old or they cant keep up with the demands. What about respite when the parents inevitably need it, will they give councils extra money for it or will they push the responsiblity onto charities.
If you push for bans like this you also need to be pushing for provisions. Invest in services in the UK, HA CRAZY TALK.
I’m very concerned about this given the state of the NHS currently
I’m a sonographer so let me explain the real situation here.
Yes we can test for it but the majority of people have the NT screening which only gives a risk factor and if you have a risk of 1:150 you are considered high risk and will be offered further testing.
If you have a CVS it’s less accurate than an amnio. If you opt for the NIPT it has the same accuracy as a CVS because both test placental cells. There are some cases where the placenta has different DNA to the baby called a mosaic placenta. These will yield false positives or false negatives.
An amniocentesis is the closest possible thing to 100% accuracy as you should be able to single out free floating fetal cells.
Next issue is the ultrasound. Let’s say you come back low risk and you carry on until 20 weeks. You can have your anomaly scan between 18 weeks and 23 weeks. So you may not get your anomaly until 23 weeks nearly in some places. Now Down’s syndrome can go completely undetected on ultrasound but sometimes we may find something which makes us suspicious. The last time I found a baby that had downs but was not picked up at screening was two small indicators on ultrasound. A slightly short femur (6th centile) and a borderline ventricle (11mm) the femur was technically normal length as the cut off is 5th centile and the ventricle I measured at 11 but my colleague measured at 9.8 which is below the cut off.
Still because of these two borderline issues I sent the patient to our fetal medicine team. They do normally see them within the week. They then had to have an amniocentesis and that has to go to a lab to be fully processed. That also takes time. In this case it came back the baby did have downs and the couple decided to terminate the pregnancy. However, you are getting incredibly close to the abortion cut off by this point because of how long it takes to do all of these things.
If they wanted to change the cut off it should have been until about 28 weeks or the start of the third trimester as this is going to risk criminalising medical abortions that happen because of delays in care due to an over burdened system.
They also need to bring in NIPT for everyone then too as it’s the most accessible way for more accurate albeit it still flawed screening. Yes some Down’s syndrome people have wonderful and fulfilling lives and don’t deserve to be treated any less because they have downs but we also should be careful of this path we are going down where we are starting to restrict people’s rights and the reality is that in some situations having a Down’s syndrome child can put extreme pressure on a family.
Having worked with moderately to high functioning downs teenagers, then the image people have of them is an illusion. They are not ‘ever happy’ forever-children. They learn that kind of behavior gets them good reactions and they put on a show for people. When they are alone they get just as contemplative and existential as the rest of us. Except they are looking towards a life of very limited employment options, limited autonomy, independence. Overall they see what non-downs teenagers their age have to look forward to. And they know they can at best have a facsimile of that. Where I worked we dealt with some major issues and depression involving them coming of age and realizing this.
I live in Iceland btw with very generous benefits and services for downs people. This is a fact no amount of money, support or training can overcome. They are just overall far less better equipped to handle life compared to their cohorts. Near most of that life will be spent in institutions, social homes and protected work places. A bubble, where they are sheltered but also miss out on experiencing the full range of adult life with all its ups and downs.
Potential problem is the possibility that this sort of thing ends up being a slippery slope.
24 comments
# Down’s syndrome abortions to be banned after 24 weeks
**MPs from all parties are expected to back Sir Liam Fox’s proposal to ban terminations up to birth for babies with the condition**
MPs from all the main parties have backed changes to the law that would abolish rules allowing abortions up to the point of birth for a foetus diagnosed with Down’s syndrome.
An amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill being tabled by Sir Liam Fox, a former cabinet minister, would bring the law in line with the 24-week abortion limit for foetuses with no “serious disabilities”.
He said the change in the law would stop people with Down’s syndrome being treated as second-class citizens, a situation he described as an “absolutely utter travesty”.
The most recent abortion statistics published by the Department of Health and Social Care revealed that there were 859 abortions involving a baby diagnosed with Down’s syndrome in 2021, up by a quarter from the previous year.
Fox’s amendment has already been backed by a string of MPs from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Democratic Unionist Party.
It will be debated and voted on as part of passage of the Criminal Justice Bill, which is expected to return to the Commons after MPs return for the Easter recess on April 15.
Fox, a former GP and former defence secretary, will argue that the current law is contradictory to the Equality Act 2010, which defines discrimination as when a person discriminates against another because of a protected characteristic.
He hopes his campaign to change the law will get a crucial boost on Wednesday as he will ask Rishi Sunak to give his own support to the amendment at prime minister’s questions.
Fox told The Times: “There is considerable cross-party support to remove an anomaly in UK law which allows those with Down’s syndrome to be aborted up until 40 weeks. Many of us believe this is utterly against the purpose of our equality legislation and treats those with Down’s syndrome as second-class citizens when it comes to their rights.
“My amendment would remove an anomaly which many were not aware even existed and send a signal about the values that we share across the political system in our country.”
The campaign group Don’t Screen Us Out has argued that the information and advice offered to pregnant woman who are expecting a baby with Down’s syndrome is biased towards opting for an abortion.
A woman can terminate her pregnancy for a foetus with no screened medical conditions before 24 weeks. However, the 1967 Abortion Act allows a woman to terminate her pregnancy up to 40 weeks for a baby that will have Down’s syndrome.
A woman with Down’s syndrome lost a legal bid to change the law in November 2022. Heidi Crowter, then 27, argued that the rules were discriminatory against people with the condition and the legislation “doesn’t respect my life”.
Fox’s bid to change the law is the latest in a long campaign to boost the rights of people with Down’s syndrome.
In 2022 he successfully pushed through groundbreaking new laws to recognise the condition as a specific ministry group, which required councils and public bodies such as schools, NHS organisations, social care services and job centres to meet the specific needs of people with the condition for the first time.
The legislation empowers families to challenge authorities that are not acting on their duties.
Fox argued that the changes were urgently needed because life expectancy for people with the condition has rapidly increased, meaning many are outliving their parents. He warned that the status quo was leading to an increasing number of adults with Down’s syndrome whose parents have died being placed in “inappropriate institutions”.
It is now far more likely that someone with Down’s syndrome outlives their parents as life expectancy is between 50 and 60 in the UK, more than double the age that it was in the 1980s, the last time the law was changed.
This seems like a very misleading headline. Fox is attempting to change the law but there it is not currently in motion. the extent of the question asked in PM questions
“Liam Fox (Con) says tomorrow is world’s Down’s syndrome day. He says abortion for Down’s syndrome is allowed up to 40 weeks. Will the PM back changing this so that it is in line with the normal abortion limit?
Sunak says when parliament legislated for abortion, it said doctors should be able to make decisions in difficult cases. He says votes on these issues have always been conscious matters.”
There is little reason for this. Down Syndrome, frankly, is a situation we cause ourselves. We know how to test for it and abort it. Iceland doesnt have any (bar2/3 a year) people with the syndrome.
I get that people get emotional about this. And there are some people who live happy lives with the syndrome. But frankly if we all just grew up on easily noticeable, lifelong diseases we can figure out in the womb we’d all be better off.
Its like the mothers who know their baby will never be able to walk or talk or move but dont abort anyway. Causing the poor kid to suffer for 6 years rolling in his own shit before succumbing.
Life is cruel. Dont be an asshole. Abort when its medically necessary.
Edit: Correction iceland has 2-3 unfortunate cases per year. But thats very very low.
It’s been a while so things might have changed, but as I recall it the testing for downs syndrome can be a risk to the unborn baby up until way late in the pregnancy.
Will this not then cause more deaths than lives it saves?
We had a late identified risk for one of ours (rather a high risk), but by then we were all in on keeping the baby, and the test was for us just to make sure the right people were in the room for the birth.
People aren’t having enough kids, let’s make it even risker they may end up with a child that needs care for the rest of their life, that should make it more attractive, especially with how we’ve decimated the NHS and care services.
High functioning Down’s syndrome people are always the ones featured in tv advertisements, magazine articles, photoshoots.
The ones who cannot function by themselves, who keep their parents (usually their mothers) basically housebound and impoverished their entire lives because they cannot be left by themselves even when they’re 45 years old and will never be able to have the slightest hint of independence, are never featured.
And Liam Fox and his party have ensured these people are basically left to fend for themselves.
Down’s syndrome is not some cutesy little disease that produces ‘simple but happy’ people.
And now the chipping away continues. Back to the kitchen and leave them shoes off. You ain’t going anywhere
I don’t know enough on this to have an informed option but seeing the Tories meddling in any way with the abortion laws give me the fear.
I would be very interested to hear how many abortions there have been for DS over 24 weeks in the last few years.
98% of abortions happen before 17 weeks (so the number after 24 weeks must be miniscule)
1.2% were carried out on the grounds of severe handicap – and that includes all medical conditions, from anencephaly to Down Syndrome
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-january-to-june-2022/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-january-to-june-2022
The NHS offers Down Syndrome testing at the 12 week scan, so in almost all cases they’ll have enough time to know and decide before 24 weeks.
My guess is that late abortion for Down Syndrome is vanishingly rare, to the point of being able to count them annually on the fingers of one hand and still have fingers left to spare.
Edit: I did a deep dive into the statistics, and there were 24 post-24 weeks abortions of foetuses with Down Syndrome in 2021, out of a total of 503 post 24 week abortions for medical reasons, and 214,256 abortions in total.
Why the focus on something that’s 0.011% of the total abortions? Because it’s a Trojan horse for wider abortion restrictions.
Yeah I’m sorry I’m just done with this shit from both America and Britain, you don’t get the right to dictate to a woman what she does with her body, or the child in her womb, its her fucking choice, she’s the one who goes through it, regardless of what either me or you agree with, it’s none of our God damn business
And this will be accompanied by a massive increase in support for parents who have children with Down’s Syndrome right?
Should have known Liam Fox was behind this.
The man doesn’t have a thought in his head unless it was inserted in there by the American christian right.
Accompanied with a massive wedge of cash.
I had a little brother with Edwards’ syndrome. I loved him to bits. He died at 3. He never spoke, walked, even crawled.
I don’t think it’s paradoxical to say that I’m both grateful we had the time with him, and that it’d have been better if he hadn’t been born. I don’t want our time with him undone, but I don’t want others to suffer a life like that in the future.
I’ve been told, by someone who never had to bury a 3 year old, that this view is how the Nazis thought. I don’t really give a shit anymore. Life shouldn’t be pain, and his life most certainly was. If we can prevent it from happening painlessly and before development, we should.
Where’s the woman with the list (the list of reasons women should never get pregnant).
I’d love to have children one day but I’ll be adopting and the more and more questionable abortion laws and women’s rights laws change I feel like it’s the right decision. I’d become feral if there were laws controlling what I did with my own body.
If they’re going to do that they need to provide WAY more support to people with the syndrome and their families.
Question. Recently, I took a call from my neurologist explaining that my epilepsy medication will now most likely cause neurological disorders in my children if I decide to have any. Under these circumstances, would I be legally allowed to terminate a pregnancy with a spouse?
Do we want abortion or not?
If you allow one caveat, more caveats are guaranteed to follow.
This is a major step backwards for women’s bodily autonomy.
This is terrifying. I’m someone who has had a termination for a baby just prior to the limit. I didn’t make my choice lightly and it isn’t something any mother chooses lightly.
In my case, my baby had neural tube defects and wasn’t growing as she should. I terminated because the alternative was potentially my baby dying after birth or dying inside me. It’s unlikely she would have survived and if she did, she probably wouldn’t have had a decent quality of life.
Had my baby had a less severe form of a neural tube defect, I wouldn’t have terminated. I wouldn’t have terminated had the prognosis been anything other than awful. I probably wouldn’t have terminated had my situation been better either. As it was, I would have been a single mother with little to no family support in a minimum wage job, a crappy flat and no support taking care of my baby. It wouldn’t have been doable with a severely disabled baby.
Judgements and lawa like this put the ball in motion for the banning of abortion, or banning abortion in cases like mine. Down’s isn’t a death sentence, however the odds of the child being able to lead a relatively independent life are fairly limited. They don’t allow mothers to make a decision based on the reality of their life as it stands and whether they can support that child.
It also fails to consider that babies born to mothers forced into this situation may be resented. That has a tremendously negative impact on your wellbeing.
What is being totally missed in this discussion is the current law doesn’t specify DS as a reason to terminate after 24 weeks, it just allows for termination after 24 weeks at the discretion of doctors and their patients if the foetus has a serious abnormality / disability. There is no list of ‘conditions where abortion is allowed after 24 weeks’
What this proposes is to *single out* Down syndrome as a disability drs are legally not allowed to perform a termination for after 24 weeks, which is a worrying first step to legally restrict women’s abortion rights.
It also does not make sense in practice, e.g. heart abnormalities may be grounds for late termination, and these could occur in a down syndrome or non-down syndrome fetus. Would women then be forced to carry to term the DS fetus but not the one that didn’t have it?
Are they going to vote to put more money into care homes, or force private providers to raise their standard of care. Most care homes are shit holes and a lot of people with downs end up in one. ive seen it so many times, the parents get too old or they cant keep up with the demands. What about respite when the parents inevitably need it, will they give councils extra money for it or will they push the responsiblity onto charities.
If you push for bans like this you also need to be pushing for provisions. Invest in services in the UK, HA CRAZY TALK.
I’m very concerned about this given the state of the NHS currently
I’m a sonographer so let me explain the real situation here.
Yes we can test for it but the majority of people have the NT screening which only gives a risk factor and if you have a risk of 1:150 you are considered high risk and will be offered further testing.
If you have a CVS it’s less accurate than an amnio. If you opt for the NIPT it has the same accuracy as a CVS because both test placental cells. There are some cases where the placenta has different DNA to the baby called a mosaic placenta. These will yield false positives or false negatives.
An amniocentesis is the closest possible thing to 100% accuracy as you should be able to single out free floating fetal cells.
Next issue is the ultrasound. Let’s say you come back low risk and you carry on until 20 weeks. You can have your anomaly scan between 18 weeks and 23 weeks. So you may not get your anomaly until 23 weeks nearly in some places. Now Down’s syndrome can go completely undetected on ultrasound but sometimes we may find something which makes us suspicious. The last time I found a baby that had downs but was not picked up at screening was two small indicators on ultrasound. A slightly short femur (6th centile) and a borderline ventricle (11mm) the femur was technically normal length as the cut off is 5th centile and the ventricle I measured at 11 but my colleague measured at 9.8 which is below the cut off.
Still because of these two borderline issues I sent the patient to our fetal medicine team. They do normally see them within the week. They then had to have an amniocentesis and that has to go to a lab to be fully processed. That also takes time. In this case it came back the baby did have downs and the couple decided to terminate the pregnancy. However, you are getting incredibly close to the abortion cut off by this point because of how long it takes to do all of these things.
If they wanted to change the cut off it should have been until about 28 weeks or the start of the third trimester as this is going to risk criminalising medical abortions that happen because of delays in care due to an over burdened system.
They also need to bring in NIPT for everyone then too as it’s the most accessible way for more accurate albeit it still flawed screening. Yes some Down’s syndrome people have wonderful and fulfilling lives and don’t deserve to be treated any less because they have downs but we also should be careful of this path we are going down where we are starting to restrict people’s rights and the reality is that in some situations having a Down’s syndrome child can put extreme pressure on a family.
Having worked with moderately to high functioning downs teenagers, then the image people have of them is an illusion. They are not ‘ever happy’ forever-children. They learn that kind of behavior gets them good reactions and they put on a show for people. When they are alone they get just as contemplative and existential as the rest of us. Except they are looking towards a life of very limited employment options, limited autonomy, independence. Overall they see what non-downs teenagers their age have to look forward to. And they know they can at best have a facsimile of that. Where I worked we dealt with some major issues and depression involving them coming of age and realizing this.
I live in Iceland btw with very generous benefits and services for downs people. This is a fact no amount of money, support or training can overcome. They are just overall far less better equipped to handle life compared to their cohorts. Near most of that life will be spent in institutions, social homes and protected work places. A bubble, where they are sheltered but also miss out on experiencing the full range of adult life with all its ups and downs.
Potential problem is the possibility that this sort of thing ends up being a slippery slope.