Brendan O’ReganA World Without Down’s Syndrome? on BBC 2, Wednesday of last week was a compelling personal documentary by actress Sally Phillips on the issue of our attitudes to Down’s Syndrome, made all the more relevant by her having a son, Olly, who has the condition.
Phillips had questions: What kind of society do we want to live in, and who do we think will be allowed to live in it? Her reflections were prompted in part by the development of a new pre-natal screening test for Down’s, one which is more accurate and less invasive than amniocentesis.
Already in the UK 90% of babies diagnosed pre-natally with Down’s are aborted, so what is it going to be like from now on? Negative messages and pressure from the medical profession to terminate was one of many issues raised. One woman, to protect herself and her unborn baby, specifically asked not to have the issue raised but her consultant did so anyway.
Phillips was understandably unsettled when anyone suggested that a life like her son’s wasn’t worth living. Yes, she was taken aback by the original diagnosis – said she was “expecting tragedy but … got comedy”.
She wondered what was “so very dreadful” about having a child with Down’s, and stressed that having such a child wasn’t a catastrophe, after one doctor said some mothers-to-be dreaded the ‘unbearable event’. We were reminded that one of the reasons for aborting Down’s babies was that they could live long and be a burden that would last (I reflected that if you were to live a very short life you were also going to be an abortion target, as in our own debate about life limiting conditions).
Information
Some medical people were adamant that screening didn’t mean ‘screening out’, that they were just providing information, but the very high termination figures suggested considerable pressure being exerted or felt.
Phillips went to Iceland where 100% of unborn babies diagnosed with Down’s are aborted. One scientist there described the attitude as ‘merciless’ yet still thought the woman should decide.
Phillips seemed to agree but by the end she was questioning if choice was always “as wonderful as it’s cracked up to be”.
She spoke to one woman who had made the choice to terminate and she gave us a chilling description of the baby getting a lethal injection to stop its heart, in the womb, and this was at 25 weeks. As if that wasn’t shocking enough Phillips reminded us that babies with Down’s can be aborted up to birth in the UK.
This was a game changing programme of huge relevance to our own current controversies, and even more worryingly we learned that a greater number of conditions can now be screened for…so after Down’s what other imperfections will be targeted?
Phillips carried the whole show with good humour, warmth, anger, frustration and incredulity. The inclusion of some articulate and loving people with Down’s created a wonderful positivity.
On the Ray D’Arcy Show (RTÉ Radio 1) the next day, D’Arcy seemed impressed and affected by the BBC show, calling it “thought provoking on so many levels”. He spoke to Aisling McNiff whose son Jack had Down’s but also severe disabilities.
She was so positive and saw the crucial distinction between eradicating disabilities and eradicating people with disabilities. D’Arcy said ‘‘we know a lot more about unborn babies and we have to decide as a society what we do with that information’’, and suggested that we could end up ‘into eugenics’.
Texts to the show were overwhelmingly positive and supportive.
Extremism
On the Wednesday night Channel 4’s Dispatches programme ‘Undercover: Britain’s Abortion Extremists’ was a laughably unbalanced documentary on extremism within the anti-abortion movement. I wonder if they’ll now proceed to expose extremism on the pro-abortion side, though the idea that it’s OK to terminate the lives of unborn living children is inherently extreme.
I would take issue with some of the methods the anti-abortion campaigners used, but nothing the programme revealed was as ugly and nasty as abortion – if the film makers find pictures of aborted foetuses offensive, how much more offensive must be the ‘procedures’ that lead to these images, but that didn’t seem to bother them – there was no awareness at all of the humanity of the unborn child. Ironically many pro-life messages got through indirectly, so more than a few own goals were scored.
Pick of the Week
MASS
RTÉ 1 Sunday, October 16, 11 am
Mass from the RTÉ Studios with Misean Cara, an organisation that includes missionaries from Ireland and all around the world.
EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND
Channel 4 Wednesday, October 19, 8 am
Debra’s hippy sister shows up unexpectedly and announces that she’s decided to become a nun.
BEYOND REDEMPTION? A WOULD YOU BELIEVE? SPECIAL
RTÉ 1 Thurday, October 20, 10.15 pm
After over 20 years giving voice to the often voiceless victims of sexual abuse, Mick Peelo turns his attention to the sexual offenders in our midst.
Abortion and the United Nations: how defenders of life have made progress in countries that want to keep abortion illegal.