The Cruelty of a Life and Death Choice

[Guest guest]

http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?1066

Published in the Independent: 23 May 2006

" 'You don't have to keep this child, you know' is what I recall the

paediatrician telling us when our younger daughter was diagnosed on the day of

her birth as having Down's Syndrome. My wife, however, remembers his remark as

'You didn't need to have this child, you know.' I suppose the truth is that

both of us were too angry with him to focus on the exact words. But his meaning

was clear: your daughter is a mistake that shouldn't have happened.

" I would like to think that our experience was unusual, but over the past

decade we have met a large number of other parents who have given birth to

children with Down's Syndrome and who have been infuriated by the insensitivity

of specialists at what is inevitably a traumatic time. 'Didn't you have the

tests?' is the standard, insulting, question. And no wonder: the scan for

foetal abnormalities is increasingly pressed on mothers-to-be, and those who

refuse are often treated as if they themselves were aberrant human beings.

" On May 21 The Sunday Telegraph reported the story of Green,

who, 35 weeks into her pregnancy, was told that her baby had Down's Syndrome.

Her obstetrician recommended that she abort the viable baby. Mr and Mrs Green

refused, and they now have 'a healthy and happy little boy' called on.

Mrs Green told the paper: 'The doctor urged us to think how having a baby with

" mental retardation " would affect our lives. He listed only the

potential negatives about Down's, without giving us any information to read for

a more balanced view. The mid-wife tried to interject and offer us some

leaflets, but he talked her down.'

" The conventional pro-choice retort to Mrs Green's outrage would, I

suspect, be to say that she exercised her choice not to abort, that other women

might choose differently - end of story. But it's not quite the end of the

story. As Green can attest, what is happening across the so-called

civilised world is that mostly male doctors are pressuring women at their most

vulnerable into taking a decision which conforms to the prejudices of the

medical establishment rather than to the vital maternal instinct called

unconditional love.

" Finally, a book has been written which puts this issue into its proper

context. It is called Defiant Birth - Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics,

and has just been released by Spinifex, the Australian feminist publishing

house. It consists of a series of personal accounts by women in Australia, the

US and Britain of how they had overcome sustained and sometimes openly hostile

pressure from doctors to be allowed to give birth to children with disabilities

- or even imagined disabilities.

" One of the more shocking accounts is by , who, 19 weeks

into pregnancy, was told by her obstetrician that her scans revealed that one

of her twins had spina bifida and no skull, while the other was missing vital

organs: 'He said the babies had to be aborted because they were so deformed

there was no hope of them surviving.'

" Let's pass on the absence of logic in that position (why should it be

essential to terminate surgically a pregnancy which would terminate

naturally?); 's twins were born some months later without any of

the abnormalities claimed to be obvious from the scans. And if you think that is

mere happenstance, consider this: in a 2000 study of 300 foetal autopsies only

39 per cent 'confirmed the pre-natal hypothesis'. This, along with many other

facts some people would rather women didn't know, is revealed in the

introduction to Defiant Birth by its editor, Melinda Tankard Reist, the

founding director of Women's Forum Australia; and as she observes: 'One wonders

if the women whose babies were autopsied were told the results.'

" In Britain it was the passing of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology

Act in 1990 which permitted the abortion of embryos up until 40 weeks - as

opposed to the normal limit of 24 weeks - if there was 'a substantial risk of a

serious handicap'. Not the least appalling aspect of this loosely worded

legislation was that the Conservative government of the day imposed a two-line

whip on the vote.

" Never before had a measure involving abortion been subject to the Party

Whip. Baroness () Warnock, the intellectual architect of the Act, told

legislators that by 'serious handicap' 'we are talking about a child who is

very severely damaged and cannot lead a meaningful life'. Well, Warnock

may consider that people with Down's cannot lead a meaningful life, but that is

not the view of the people concerned and nor is it the view of their parents.

" Unfortunately, the vast majority of obstetricians are genuinely of the

view that people with Down's Syndrome have a negative value: literally so,

because these doctors argue that the expense of the scanning programme can be

justified by the NHS as it 'avoids' the costs to the state of supporting

children with Down's. We did not 'have the scans' when my wife was pregnant

with Domenica, but I recall that even the specialists told us after she was

born that 'she may well never be able to walk or talk'. At the age of 10 she is

a very fluent reader, does not let her parents interrupt her when she is

talking, and is a very flexible gymnast.

" But the real point is that Domenica is not exceptional for a child with

Down's: obstetricians, whose job ends when the baby comes out of the womb, are

startlingly ignorant of the true potential of children with Down's Syndrome.

Confronted with an utterly bleak prognosis, no wonder 90 per cent of British

mothers-to-be decide to abort babies diagnosed with Down's. If they were

advised by people who actually knew what they were talking about, a different

outcome could be predicted. As Melinda Tankard Reist points out: 'Of the 55

couples who contacted the Down's Syndrome Adoption Exchange in the US in 1990

after prenatal diagnosis only two decided to place their child for adoption and

none opted for abortion.'

" Over the past decade I have often wondered just why obstetricians have

such a horror of bringing a person with Down's into the world. After all, many

of these men perform surgical miracles in the womb to save the lives of sick

children. Perhaps the reason lies there: Down's can't be cured. There is

nothing that the medical profession can do to reverse it: the condition is

created at the moment of meiosis - the first seconds of the embryo's existence.

" But the other reason why Down's can't be cured is that it is not a

disease or an illness or, as some members of the public still appear to

believe, an infection. There is nothing to be cured - save the fear and

hostility of the medical profession and the misery that causes to countless

women who are cruelly confronted with a life or death choice. "

d.lawson@...