Taking the knee for diversity – but not for Down syndrome
by Ann Farmer, MercatorNet:
‘When mum told me about the discrimination against babies like me in the womb I felt like a knife had been put into my heart. It made me feel less valued than other people.‘
Judges at the UK Court of Appeal have turned down a legal challenge against a section of the Abortion Act that allows abortion up to birth for disabled babies.
Heidi Crowter, a 27-yearold woman who has Down’s syndrome, brought the challenge along with Maire Lee-Wilson, whose son Aidan has Down. They argued that this legislation is an instance of inequality. The 1967 Abortion Act allowed abortions up to the limit of viability – then seen as 28 weeks – but in 1990, when the limit was lowered to 24 weeks, abortions were excluded if there were “a substantial risk…it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”. Down syndrome was amongst these abnormalities.
Ms Crowter declared in a tweet that: “When mum told me about the discrimination against babies like me in the womb I felt like a knife had been put into my heart. It made me feel less valued than other people.”
Court of Appeal judges Lord Justice Underhill, Lady Justice Thirlwall and Lord Justice Peter Jackson ruled that the Abortion Act did not interfere with the rights of the “living disabled”. Therefore, they reasoned, the law was striking a balance between the rights of the unborn child and women.
It is a strange sort of balance that allows one party to be legally killed at the behest of another (albeit badly advised). In these enlightened times, when terms like ‘abnormalities’ and ‘handicapped’ are viewed with horror, the judges have decided that these babies have no rights at all; they (or ‘it’) can be killed right up to birth – even when in the birth canal — and with medics piling pressure on parents to choose abortion, these silent victims need people willing to speak up for them.
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