To be glad that the Down Syndrome abortion appeal was defeated

[Fififafa]

A woman with DS has twice tried and failed to get the courts to outlaw abortion beyond 24 weeks for foetuses with DS. Under current legislation for England, Wales and Scotland, there is a 24-week time limit for abortion, unless "there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped", which includes Down's syndrome.
I read that she has is being supported by some religious group.

I’m glad that the appeal was lost. This is a personal decision that every woman has the choice and the right to make. What Heidi Crowter et al are doing, is fighting to remove that choice from women. AIBU?

The number of late terminations is minuscule.

And given the delays in maternity care - my 20 week scan didn’t happen until 24 weeks and that was pre covid and the recent chronic shortages - it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a fair number in that amount that were later than they would have been had women been seen more timely.

Women who abort past 24 weeks very often have already accepted having a disabled baby, they want to keep it but further testing reveals a lifetime of pain awaits that child or certain death after birth. So they make that difficult choice to bring forward the inevitable.......I honestly think societies views on this would change if they had a glimpse of what these babies and children face, locked behind hospital walls, It is no lif and there are so many mothers who regret their decision to proceed with those type of pregnancies, not for them, but for the actual human enduring that pain being inflicted on them.

Absolutely.

All of you saying that there should be no termination - would you fully commit to raising a disabled child both financially and physically for 24 hours a day, forever? Possibly as a single parent with little support from the state or society because the stress of caring for your child has strained your relationship to the extent that your partner/spouse has walked out?

Would you watch your other children lose opportunities of every type because the whole household had to function around the needs of the disabled individua?

Just think about it. It means you probably can't work full time, your physical and mental health will suffer and so will your relationships. As you get older, and your child becomes physically more difficult to handle, the strains on you physically, mentally and emotionally will increase exponentially..

Will you expect any other children you have to care for their sibling if your disabled child outlives you?

Ideology is all well and good but the harsh reality is very hash indeed.

You did 100% right thing. Why? Because as a mother you chose what was best for your precious child. Any other desision would have also been the right desision.

Because as a mum, who loves her child, it's your choice to make. I'm so sorry this was dealt to you. Anything that comes from a place of love is the right choice and people should be free to choose, from a well informed place.

'Abortions may be performed after 24 weeks in certain circumstances, for example, if the mother's life is at risk or the child would be born severely disabled. Abortions where gestation is 24 weeks or over account for a very small number of abortions (0.1% of the total). There were 236 such abortions in 2020.'

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2020/abortion-statistics-england-and-wales-2020

Anything that comes from a place of love is the right choice

Beautifully put.

I am relieved at today's ruling. They say they intend to appeal to the supreme court but it's not clear to me on what grounds they would get permission to do that.

In the original high court judicial review, they made a number of arguments, most of which focused on the 'rights' of the foetus (right to life, right to freedom from torture, right not to be discriminated against on grounds of disability). As PP have pointed out, personhood, and therefore human rights, begin at birth and not before. There are good reasons for upholding this principle whatever your views on abortion. The judge rejected these arguments and did not give the claimants permission to appeal on any of these grounds.

They also made the argument that having a different time limit for disability indirectly discriminated against already born disabled people by giving the impression that their lives are worth less. The judge also rejected this argument because there was insufficient evidence that the different abortion time limits influenced public perception of disability, and even if there had been enough evidence, permitting women to terminate in these distressing circumstances was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim and therefore would be lawful indirect discrimination. But the judge gave permission for them to appeal on this ground alone, because it was a novel argument that deserved further consideration in a higher court.

This is what today's judgment is about. Three judges have now heard that argument in detail and have spent several months considering this single point of law. The judges have rejected the argument and as far as I know have not given permission for appeal to the supreme court. IANAL but I believe the appellants can still apply independently for permission to appeal to the supreme court but they need a point of law, they can't appeal just because they disagree with the last lot of judges.

The full judgment and a summary are available here:

www.judiciary.uk/judgments/crowter-v-secretary-of-state-for-health-and-social-care-2/

Haven't had time to read the full judgment but the summary is worth a read.

YABU. I can’t believe we allow termination up until birth - it’s monstrous. It’s not termination at that stage, it’s infanticide.

Abortion is not murder. Nor is it infanticide. t’s not even a matter of opinion either, by definition it is not. Even if a woman was charged with a crime for having an illegal late term abortion, the crime wouldn’t be murder but child destruction.

even before the abortion act in the UK, abortion wasn’t classed as murder.

Yanbu - and I say that as a mother of a child born with a rare syndrome (so rare, we only had the name of it given in 2020 when my son was 12 years old) he has complex health issues. In and out of hospital. 14 with the mental age of a 2 year old, non verbal, care needs 24/7- I am up every 2 hours with him on a good night / a bad night- no sleep at all… the future is unknown due to the rarity of the syndrome.

I was only 21 years old when I had him. Scans did pick up he had a short femur bone, and we were referred to feral medicine unit for further scans / investigation.. it didn’t go further than that. We were told the short femur bone MAY indicate a syndrome, but since they could find nothing else, it most likely meant there was nothing to worry about.

we were totally unprepared for the reality. Of course, I won’t sit here now and say I wish I had aborted him. But in all honesty, if I had been able to find out his syndrome and what that would mean for his life AND for mine (I had to give up all my ambitions and dreams to care full time) at the age of 21… then yes, I would have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have continued the pregnancy.

I don’t think ‘so you people want to kill someone like my child!!’
I think every woman should have the choice and be able to make an informed decision. Without judgement.

I do not think abortion at 40 weeks should be allowed at all. It’s literally killing babies.

For all the women who have been through the torment and heartbreak of late TFMR and who come onto these distressing threads and tell their stories -

I am so sorry for your loss and I am so thankful for your courage.

I respect both sides of this argument. But I know Heidi and can assure you she is no-one’s mouthpiece.

Also, I don’t think the ‘Yabu’ crew, think much further than ‘you can’t abort a baby at such and such weeks! It’s wrong!’… so what do you think the ideal outcome is then? A child with disabilities / complex health issues born to parents that didn’t want them? Do you have any idea what life can look like for the child and the parents? And the rest of the family? Any idea of the lack of support there is?? As a 24/7 carer to my son for 14 years, we have only just been granted 1 night a months respite. I’ve never had a break. Ever.
any idea of the very little support there is to the child? We have so many different professionals involved with my son. But we have to fight for literally everything for him and even then he does not have everything he should…
i am now in the position where I’m being asked to think about his future… he will never be independent. I have to decide if I will put him in a residential care setting (few and far between ) when he is an adult. Or if i will continue to be his full time carer - but obviously without school, which he leaves at 19…. I have no idea if I can give him a decent quality of life as an adult if he stays with me… lack of resources… yet, I can’t imagine finding a setting that is right for him either. I will be 40 when he is 18. I have never been able to work properly (have done a few jobs here and there but have had to give up and admit defeat. I don’t have the energy for a job and be up all night with my son. And also I have to take so much time out when he’s in and out of hospital and the million appointments… no employer is ok with that.) but I actually want to be able to be ‘me.’ I want to work. I want to achieve some of my ambitions… I want my son to thrive and have a good life. But you know what? It is so hard. It is SO fucking damn hard.
unless it is YOUR pregnancy and YOUR future, it should not be YOUR judgment. Are you lining up to take all the unwanted babies with syndromes that the mum was forced to continue with (should a ban have been imposed) because I can tell you now, statistically a severely disabled baby is not high on potential adopters wish lists…. And a life in care is probably not going to be an amazing quality of life for that child…. It’s easy to sit there and judge. It’s harder to actually live this life.

It is SO fucking damn hard. unless it is YOUR pregnancy and YOUR future, it should not be YOUR judgment.

Exactly, it is just so easy to have such a blasé attitude towards other people’s futures because you’re not ‘comfortable’ with their decisions.

If a termination happened at full term (hypothetically as this is so staggeringly rare it is barely relevant to the debate) it would be done for reasons such as severe foetal disability, usually the child having no chance of any life other than a painful few hours or days before passing away. Or expected foetal death. Or maternal death.

If you genuinely care about children you would be far more horrified at one going through that than them peacefully and without pain passing away.

Would you really choose for them to be born, to quickly die in pain rather than a peaceful termination?

Would you really choose for a woman to be refused a termination and be forced to die in order to give birth?

This!!! Especially the first part… it’s RARE! You would think by some of these replies, that terminating past 30 weeks is a regular occurrence. It simply isn’t.

It’s not! It’s an abortion of a feotus. It has no personhood!

I have struggled with how much to blame HC for this and how much I think she is a victim.

On the one hand, HC is in no way 'profoundly disabled' - she has a job, is married and lives semi-independently. In many respects I agree with her that she is living her best life. Like her parents, and I think (?) her husband, she is an evangelical christian. Religious freedom is a human right that applies equally to people with LD. She is as entitled to her views on abortion as anyone else.

On the other hand I am aware that HC was a prominent face of the 'Don't screen us out' campaign since she was a young child. I would not expect a child without LD to understand complex arguments around the ethics of medical tests and abortion rights.

It seems to me that HC has grown up being told by the trusted adults around her that lots of people don't think her life is worth much and that is why they support NIPT or abortion rights. Telling any child that others don't value them as human beings, and allowing them to grow up believing that, is abusive. Even moreso if, because of LD, that child will always struggle to do their own independent research and find and engage with different viewpoints.

Today I came across the twitter account of HC's sibling who believes H is a victim in all this. That's good enough for me.

This court case (if it continues), and other activities of this group of people, are a threat to abortion rights in the UK, however we are in a much stronger position than women in the US.

Roe v Wade was case law which was always in danger of being overturned. In the UK our rights to abortion are written into primary legislation which can only be changed by parliament.

Despite the noisiness of this group, we do not have a strong religious right wing in the UK. The tories on the whole are libertarians and anything to do with abortion has always been a free vote. The main religious power is CoE bishops in the HoL who are mostly a bunch of lefties.

But two courts now have told these people to take it up with parliament and so we can expect lobbying and private member's bills. As long as our abortion rights are dependent on a law that decriminalises abortion only within certain time limits and in certain circumstances then the time limits and circumstances will be under attack.

I learnt on a recent thread about abortion law in New Zealand. Sounds sensible to me. If we adopted this kind of legislation it would make almost no difference to the number of abortions but it would reduce delay and would make our rights much more robust to challenge.

www.health.govt.nz/our-work/regulation-health-and-disability-system/abortion-services-information-health-practitioners/abortion-legislation

Both laws permit people to end their life due to their condition.
Which is implying that a life with downs syndrome or autism is not worth living

I know personally of one woman who had to choose to compassionately induce her much wanted, loved, prayed for baby at 35w. Her baby's brain had deteriorated so much that he was fitting, constantly. His tiny body was giving up. The actual birth process, for him, would have been monstrous, and he would have died in pain, fitting, spasming and suffering. His heart was spasming. His kidney function was nil. He was born silently into a calm, loving, prepared environment. They are forever scarred by the loss of him.

Read my earlier post. Nobody is "murdering" their babies. Nobody is getting to 36w and going "not perfect?! No way!". When tfmr happens that late it is because suffering and death is the ONLY option for that precious child.

Your judgement on her, and the
others like her is nothing short of evil.

""I personally feel if you don't want a baby with Down's syndrome then you shouldn't be allowed to have a baby. I know this is controversial and many will agree. But if a person doesn't want a disabled baby of any kind they shouldn't have a baby in my opinion. Disability can happen at any moment""
What an ignorant person you are and thank god you don't make the laws around here and women can make decisions about their own bodies, lives and families without someone so judgemental and closed minded as you making the rules.
I didn't have the blood test for DS, because I was young and nieve and I loved my baby and I didn't think the stats were convincing, that was my choice then and my baby was born healthy after a long traumatic labour. Does that make me more virtuous or a better parent?? I'll tell you now for a fact no it doesn't. I would make different choices now.
If I was to become pregnant now I wouldnt need to test for anything I would abort before 12 weeks. My choice I don't need to tell you or anyone else why, I would have loved another one, now, no.
My dear friend has just given birth to and lost a gorgeous boy, there were no tests for the genetic condition that baby had, he spent most of his little life being prodded and poked and stuck with needles.
How dare you suggest anyone, any innocent baby should have to be willing to go through that, they are not the circumstances most people think of when they decide to bring another human into this world, it's traumatic for the parents and people who love them and it's bloody agony for the baby.
Shame on you.

I agree with this. It should be a woman’s choice whether she wants to commit herself to caring for a disabled child for the rest of her life. One of my friends has a brother who has disabilities and will never be able to live alone. My friends mum will care for her adult son until she is too old to do so and then he will have to move into some sort of care home… It’s no easy feat.

I find it disturbing that people are trying to take away women’s rights and I believe no woman will make a decision like abortion lightly. We need to trust women.

Whatever the law on abortion is, the time limit for a foetus with Down's Syndrome should be the same as for a foetus without Down's Syndrome.