I have just been called ableist because I support antenatal screening

[noideawheretostart]

And I'm so blind sided by it that I don't really know where to begin with how incorrect that statement is.

Antenatal screening isn't just about terminating early - it's also about preparation- without antenatal screening babies with treatable heart problems might die simply due to being born at home or in MLUs rather than in specialist hospitals with a surgery team and/or with a NICU on hand.

Antenatal screening can pick up things that would make being being born vaginally risky - allowing for a planned c-section.

Antenatal screening can allow surgery in-utero for things like spina bifida.

How is it disablist to want as much information as possible?

My feeling exactly @AthollPlace

Offering screening isn't ableist, agreed. Pressuring women into screening (former midwife of mine: "oh just sign the consent anyway! you can always change your mind on the day if you still don't want to!"), or seeing it as solely a route to termination and nothing else, is bad though.

*You understand 'disabled' is a very broad term and that 'quality of life' is far from a universally agreed on thing and varies for individuals, right? Screening for T21 is probably the most commonly discussed one in this country antenatally. Plenty of people with Down's and their families would take serious issue with the idea that it's selfish to have given birth to them, and rightly so.

I do think this is the kind of subject that sounds different when you're coming at it from the perspective of being disabled yourself though. I have a congenital disability - it's not the kind of thing that could be routinely screened for, but I wouldn't have screened for it even if it could have been*

@53rdWay Did you not read what I wrote? Yes I do understand hence why I ended the sentence with 'quality of life'. If you know that you are bringing a disabled child into the world that will have NO QUALITY OF LIFE it is selfish and I do not understand why parents would willingly make a child suffer that to stroke their own egos and bleat on about how high and mighty they are. I am well aware that not all disabilities are equal

I am well aware that not all disabilities are equal

Then you should be well aware why women might turn down screening, including as it does screening for conditions that aren't terminal or that don't include short lives full of suffering.

I did read what you wrote. What you wrote was "I honestly do not understand how women wouldn't want antenatal screening. It's so so selfish."

I can't believe so many people have so little understanding of something - yet still have a really, really strong opinion on it. What happened to just saying "Actually I don't know enough about this topic to comment"?

FTR I had screening in my pregnancies and one test picked up an abnormality which could have been dangerous if it had remained undetected. Instead I was monitored a lot more closely and given an earlier c-section because of it. I guess I should have just let nature take its course?

I fully support antenatal choices for whatever reason the woman chooses. Be that they want a particular sex, or cant face knowingly having a disabled child or because the time isnt right for whatever reason.

I have a slight issue with the way society is going, that theyre going to say that having a disabled child is a choice soon though, and therefore you bear all the burden if you choose that knowingly

one thing that concerns me is that if a condition can be screened for then it can potentially be eliminated- ie there can become an expectation that a woman will terminate. There will be fewer and fewer people born with that condition. It's not difficult to imagine a situation where providing services for people with that disability becomes unpopular, because 'well, why did you choose to have them? you didn't have to. Your choice, you pay for the extra services'

I did all the screening - high risk on NHS so did harmony test. In the wait before getting the all clear I realised that T21 wasn't necessarily a reason to terminate for me but some of the (especially heart related) co morbidities would make me seriously question the child's future quality of life.

Equally I wanted to know because history of fast labour and being quite rural might mean planning to give birth at one of the regional centres of excellence rather than the local general hospital. If a child already has disabilities- probably better not to increase them by say oxygen deprivation following birth...

The aim should be to enable what is best for each individual woman and their unborn child, which might in some circumstances be termination!

cross post, Branleuse

There are conditions that can be corrected in the womb , there by not picking this up before birth you could be sentencing the unborn baby to life of pain or even an early death

I think screening should be mandatory because of the risk of the placenta being too close to the cervix, as well as potential risks to the fetus.

If you don't want to know the results and they aren't life threatening to you or the fetus, it shouldn't be mandatory to find out about them until after the birth.

I worry about that too @Branleuse - I hope the mother's right NOT to screen is as respected as the mother's right to screen. But I still believe we should be offered that choice.

Branleuse that is a concern - I can well imagine us getting to a stage where a future Tory government denies a parent Carer allowance or similar because they had a higher risk of something pointed out to them in pregnancy and chose to continue with the pregnancy...

That's absolute BS Op. and I wouldn't bother engaging in discussion with somebody so ridiculous.

I would absolutely abort a pregnancy that showed Downs Syndrome or other anomalies. That does not mean I would ever discriminate again at somebody with a disability. It means that I would make a decision for myself and my family. That is nobody else's business.

I am a carer to both of my children, who attend special schools with children with Down's syndrome.

I find it insulting that I would be called ableist for supporting giving a woman a choice to find out if she is carrying a child with Down's syndrome. What she does with that pregnancy based on that information is surely, also, HER choice.

I would not for a second say that the children that exist in the world with this condition should not have been born.

We are all here (hopefully!) because our mother's chose to have us.

I have had friends with a partial molar preganancy, a baby with anencephaly, and another with a baby with a congenital heart condition. The first two of these pregnancies were aborted and the last was delivered in a hospital where specialist care was immediately available. Were these mothers ableist? What quality of life do you think the baby without a brain could have had if it had survive for a few hours after birth?

Name calling is becoming such a fashionable thing to bludgeon people with, it's always about that person's personal politics and never equally considers the needs and feelings of all people in the situation. Please don't let it upset you.

It's a complicated issue (aren't they all) but of course a woman should have the right to choose, including making decisions on their situation and capacity to cope. Life in the UK is currently no bed of roses for parents of disabled children, the fight to be able to work and to get provision and childcare and cope financially is a huge battle. I saw a friend go through the hideous situation of having just received a terminal diagnosis for her very disabled toddler, and being told that the pregnancy she was currently in the early stages of was almost certainly going to result in an identical diagnosis. It wasn't anywhere near as simple as 'ablist' to decide to end that pregnancy.

Screening also picks up the need for medical care or surgery at birth, or even before birth, for some disabilities teams are now in place and working with families before children are born. That's hard to argue as anything but positive.

I find that most of the people who are anti-screening either have healthy kids or kids with very mild versions of trisomies / genetic conditions . They probably have no idea what it’s like to give birth to a baby with half a head or the ‘cyclops’ deformity associated with Edwards and Patau and then needing to watch them die in your arms because your hospital isn’t prepared for the treatment.

Before I had my dc, I would have said that I wouldn’t abort any child who could be disabled as long as they were pain free

Now I realise how much work able children can I, I know I can’t look after a disabled child

Therefore, personally, if a screening shows there could be a problem which is then proven, then I would have to make the heart breaking choice to abort

I wonder if the person that called me ableist would have done so if they had two children that are still in nappies past the age of five, children of increasingly strength that attacked them regularly and had such cognitive impairment that they didn't even know they were disabled.

I wonder if they would have a different perspective in that scenario...

Screening saves lives. It's that simple really.

Theres a huge range of issues that can be picked up from simple fixes to conditions that would not be compatible with life. And not forgetting otherwise healthy babies that could die as a result if being breech transverse or a placenta completely covering the way out and the mother potentially dying giving birth to them.

What a woman does with the information is up to them. And only them. Unless people are going to take on the babies themselves they really should butt out.

The best response I could come up with is that if the 'ableist-accuser' doesn't want to be screened during pregnancy *she can exercise her freedom of choice and decline but what other women do during their pregnancies has sweet nothing to do with her.

*If the 'ableist-accuser' is a man my response would be considerably more brief and end in "off".

and yes it's about preparation also.

What's the point in spending hundreds on a designer nursery only to discover you will need to adapt the entire house, or get specialist equipment etc

Sorry for the asterisk fail!