Campaign to remove prenatal tests

[Wondermule]

Posting in Feminism as from what I can see AIBU can get really nasty. I read this article a few weeks ago and it’s been playing on my mind ever since.

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/26/ken-ross-disabled-person-as-famous-as-brad-pitt-on-screen-down-syndrome

Has the Guardian really given column inches to a MAN who is lobbying for prenatal tests to be withheld from women?! Not only that, it seems to be painting him in quite a positive light about it all!

Just posting for other’s opinions really.

Privileged male wants to force woman to carry and birth disabled children because his child has downs syndrome.

Arsehole.

This is something that rears its head from time to time.

It is worth keeping up with it and taking note in case it ever get more serious.

It would be unreasonable to withhold prenatal testing from women. Anyone with enough money could get it done privately anyway. It is not something you have to have if you don't want it.

He can FOTTFSOF.

Why do you need to know if your baby is going to have Down syndrome or not?” asks Ross, who is lobbying parliament to remove the NHS screening on grounds that it is prejudicial.

Do you think he even realises the other conditions that are tested for? Or that women who already know they would continue a pregnancy regardless of a DS diagnosis choose to have screening so they can be prepared?

“Why do you need to know if your baby is going to have Down syndrome or not?”

Because it's really fucking hard raising a kid with special needs and there is never enough support or money, and it's all way more basic and everyday and pragmatic than 'valuing lives'.

I would put good money on this guy's wife doing 95% of the caring here.

Absobloodylutely.

Want to reduce the termination rate?

Rich guy can lobby for improved support for families. Might mean he has to pay higher taxes though. He not keen on that?

White affluent man wants to dictate to women how they make pregnancy choices.

Presumably he gave up his own career to support his child through their associated health issues and additional needs?

It’s a real shame because he made some other important points about inclusion, and the way parents are supported when a child with a difference is first born or identified antenatally. But he fails to understand he is talking from a very privileged position.

“Why do you need to know if your baby is going to have Down syndrome or not?”

So I can have an abortion and avoid the devastating heartache of trying to raise a disabled child with little support from the government? Because I know that my mental health would crumble if I was faced with this.

This is just anti choice rubbish in disguise.

@PotholeParadies

He can FOTTFSOF.

Why do you need to know if your baby is going to have Down syndrome or not?” asks Ross, who is lobbying parliament to remove the NHS screening on grounds that it is prejudicial.

Do you think he even realises the other conditions that are tested for? Or that women who already know they would continue a pregnancy regardless of a DS diagnosis choose to have screening so they can be prepared?

Also, a fetus diagnosed with t21 ar 10 weeks gestation whose mother does not choose termination still has a 50% chance of dying before delivery. If I chose to continue pregnancy after a t21 diagnosis, I would want extra scans!

Want to reduce termination rates for pregnancies with t21? Improve public disability services, especially those for adults.

the only difference with Down syndrome is that you have one extra chromosome and a learning disability

That's also rather dismissive of people's lived experience. My uncle had DS and it was responsible for a few more challenges and comorbidities than this sentence would suggest.

This is an area that people who advocate or have an interest in disability awareness are pretty concerned about, so actually I think it's a fairly important public discussion, whether or not I agree with all of his conclusions. Plenty of women have issues with sex selection testing for similar reasons.

You don't fix the problem of sex-selective abortions by forcing women to continue with pregnancies they wish to terminate. It's ugly and horrible, but forcing women to continue with any unwanted pregnancy is not on, and it doesn't matter how awful their reasons are.

Anyone who's been involved with campaigning for reproductive rights has encountered this.

@notyourhandmaid

You don't fix the problem of sex-selective abortions by forcing women to continue with pregnancies they wish to terminate. It's ugly and horrible, but forcing women to continue with any unwanted pregnancy is not on, and it doesn't matter how awful their reasons are.

Anyone who's been involved with campaigning for reproductive rights has encountered this.

That's a point of view, however you might note that sex selective abortions are illegal in many places, and many people, including many women, think they ought to be, even in the UK.

It's one thing to disagree and make an argument about your point, it's another to claim the discussion is invalid and be incensed that it's been printed in a newspaper because it goes outside some particular orthodoxy. I'd like to think GC feminists have seen through that sort of approach.

I don't care if people think this is immoral: if women were not able to abort fetuses with genetic abnormalities and conditions incompatible with life, then I will support infanticide. No woman should be forced to carry or raise a child she doesn't want, full stop. This would only lead to more disabled children and families in traffic situations and drains on institutional resources. I'm very sick of men telling women their opinions on what women should do with their bodies.

As well as the woman being affected, it’s not fair on the child to have to grow up and live in a household where they are unwanted and their needs cannot be met. I’m sure that children with learning difficulties in these situations are often neglected or abused as well.

Babies born with Downs syndrome may need specialist help at birth. Prenatal testing allows for greater preparedness.

@ShowOfHands

the only difference with Down syndrome is that you have one extra chromosome and a learning disability

That's also rather dismissive of people's lived experience. My uncle had DS and it was responsible for a few more challenges and comorbidities than this sentence would suggest.

I thought the same. I would have significant concerns about someone purporting to be representative of Down Syndrome and claiming this. Clearly he deals with people with trisomy 21 who are high functioning and able to act in films. Does he think the issues associated with trisomy 21 such as severe autism, severe behavioural disturbances, multiple cardiac surgeries, early onset dementia, major bowel disorders, profound intellectual impairment, are just “an extra chromosome and a learning disability”?

I know someone who had to care for their DS brother with dementia in his 40s and both elderly parents with stroke, dementia etc. All three died within a couple of years of each other. Some people may not find the risk of this sort of outcome that daunting at the time of a positive test, but others would, and there should be a choice in that.

This guy sounds like he lives in a TV producer luvvie bubble about trisomy 21 without the realities of taking care of a profoundly disabled child through to their adulthood for 40 to 60 years into your own elderly years with no money, until your own disabilities become too much for you to care for yourself let alone someone else. And he wants to remove women’s right to choose based on his perceptions.

It's one thing to disagree and make an argument about your point, it's another to claim the discussion is invalid and be incensed that it's been printed in a newspaper because it goes outside some particular orthodoxy. I'd like to think GC feminists have seen through that sort of approach.

Um... what?!

BTW - Irish woman here. I trust you know enough to back off, given that you probably haven't gone door-to-door begging for reproductive rights in the past 3 years.

It’s a shame he advocates for banning antenatal testing as otherwise the article makes good points, especially about the really awful situation with COVID and the “do not resuscitate” orders put on people with learning disabilities. But it’s a Guardian article so it starts with problems of privilege - movie people falling over themselves to hype one actor with DS - and ends with a man trying to remove reproductive choice, and they don’t even notice, cos Guardian. Yes of course he is allowed to have that opinion, I have friends who worried a lot about the Emmerdale storyline and I love them and their child with DS so I know they see it from the perspective of their own wonderful child. But the fact that this Guardian writer and their editors, workers at a national paper rather than devoted parents, don’t question the effect of removing reproductive rights or ask him how he thinks that would work out in practice, speaks volumes about their attitude to women.

Some babies with DS don't make it. They can have massive congenital heart issues.

Many have autism as well as ds.

Some are extremely capable and clever and can have a career, and healthy.

Women have a right to be informed. I refused first time round as felt capable (and I also feel as there's no test for autism, what's the point.) second time I had a young son to consider, a Dh who was v anxious and as an older mother, knew far too many women of my age who'd had late terminations due to types of trisomy that weren't compatible with life, including two who had ds.

The nipt test can be done at 11 weeks and so women are informed much earlier.

@Highfalutinlootin

I don't care if people think this is immoral: if women were not able to abort fetuses with genetic abnormalities and conditions incompatible with life, then I will support infanticide. No woman should be forced to carry or raise a child she doesn't want, full stop. This would only lead to more disabled children and families in traffic situations and drains on institutional resources. I'm very sick of men telling women their opinions on what women should do with their bodies.

Really? You would support infanticide of babies born with Down Syndrome?

the only difference with Down syndrome is that you have one extra chromosome and a learning disability

Used to work in cardiology. Syndromes are a collection of things, in DS that often includes a deformed heart and as people with DS have impaired immune systems they rarely qualify for transplants.

Lots of people with DS can live independent or supported lives, many cannot.

the only difference with Down syndrome is that you have one extra chromosome and a learning disability

Is this guy so uninformed that he is campaigning to remove women's rights whilst genuinely believing this is the case? Or is he downplaying the many, very serious complications of DS in order to bolster his argument? Is it ignorance or malice?

He works with a DS charity so you'd think he'd be exposed to the reality of the chronic lack of support for families who have children with disabilities, and understand the impact it has on parents and particularly mothers.

Yet another man, with enough money and the expectation that others will do the hard work of HIS choice, wanting to dictate to women what to do with their lives.

I would put good money on this guy's wife doing 95% of the caring here.

Yep, that was one of the things that got me the most - I can’t imagine he was jetting around producing films while simultaneously caring for his son 🙄 I also wonder whether people with disabled children advocating for removing the tests realise that a huge rise in babies with complex needs being born would mean they all get an even tinier slice of the pie, in terms of government help and support.

I have noticed an increase in anti-choice or anti-testing views being given airtime, which worries me.

I, like many others, don’t like ‘Down’s syndrome’, because it erroneously implies that the physician who first identified the condition, John Langdon Down, also had it. I also believe it can encourage the use of offensive terminology like ‘a Down’s person’. Globally, the term ‘trisomy 21’ is now increasingly used in place of Down syndrome, which I personally feel is more appropriate, and we may see a greater shift towards this name in the future

Oh he finds it offensive does he? White male again telling the vulnerable or oppressed group what they should find offensive.

I worked with many Children with DS, they all call themselves “Downies”. “Trisomy 21-ers” doesn’t quite have the same sound.

Plus it doesn’t suggest Down was affected. Many, many things in science from syndromes to proteins are named by their discoverer.