No, Eugenicism against Down’s Syndrome babies is not acceptable | Jason Plessas
“I find it deeply offensive”, retorts a 24-year-old campaigner from her position on the couch of a television breakfast talkshow. You might expect to eye-roll with weary familiarity at what comes next. Who is this latest young grievance-monger and narcissist to come bidding for national recognition of some imagined injustice? It’s perhaps understandable given the current climate to imagine they’re here this time to shoehorn some alien pronoun into the English language, or to tack yet another letter onto the ever-sprawling and increasingly excessive ‘LGBTQQIAAP+’...?
But not this time. This time you’d be wrong to. Because not only is the youth in question that rare thing, a millennial rebel with a cause, the cause is one that should be of interest to every conservative, Christian, or frankly anyone with an interest in restoring the moral fabric of Western civilisation. And yet, one that might just shame a fair few progressives out of their silence on the matter too.
The remarkable young woman is Heidi Crowter. She’s speaking for one of the very few groups who face genuine discrimination in British society. And not just social discrimination- I mean that codified, state-sanctioned, legal sort of discrimination.
Under the Abortion Act 1967, unborn babies with Down syndrome can be aborted right up until the end of a pregnancy, along with those with other non-fatal disabilities including cleft-lip palate and clubfoot. Heidi is the public face of Don’t Screen Us Out, who are mounting a legal challenge to end that discrepancy. “Five minutes before the baby comes down the birth canal, if the child is suspected to have Down’s, the baby could be aborted,” says her mother, Liz Crowter, despite people with Down’s being more than capable of living life “to the full”. It’s a point her daughter, who holds down a job and is planning her wedding this summer, would seem to prove.
My own experience concurs. I have worked with children and young people with Down Syndrome and they are invariably among the most joyful, gregarious and enthusiastic students one could ever hope for. One of them, whom I have come to know quite well, altar-serves at my local parish church, knows three languages and can whistle national anthems you’ve never heard of.
But even if this wasn’t generally the case, and DS had listed among its symptoms ‘being a terrible grump and hating everything’, would this justify termination? Who are we to define who is worthy of life? Yes, it’s absolutely true that the actual symptoms include mental and social developmental delays. And it’s true that medical complications can result in obesity, hypothyroidism, leukaemia and other conditions that significantly shorten life expectancy. One may argue that it is better not to give such a life to a child, that it would be better never to have been born. But I’d ask you to try telling that to the child, or – if you prefer – when they are an adult. The insult is certainly not lost on Heidi: “What it says to me is that my life just isn’t as valuable as others, and I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s downright discrimination!”
Of course, this problem never used to be one of prevalence. The thorny issue of 'playing God' was none at all when we all believed in the Real Thing, He who made us in our glorious, flawed heterogeneity. But if God is out of the picture, the task is left to capricious human priorities. Of Earthly matters, material things, comfort, individualism and convenience. It is highly fitting that the most nakedly frank expression of current guiding principles on Down’s pregnancies came in tweet form from Prof. Richard Dawkins in 2014, decreeing that the only ethical response to a Down's pregnancy is to "Abort it and try again," explaining that "it would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice."
Furthermore, there appears to be some correlation between the levels of atheism in a Western European nation and its termination rate. In Iceland almost half of people claimed no religion in 2017. And the proportion of mothers who chose to take the screening test tested positive for DS and then chose to abort was close to 100 per cent (not, it should be noted, that the rate overall is 100 per cent as reported by some overzealous pro-life groups). In Denmark, where the irreligious polled at 61 per cent in 2017, the figures are similar.
Our approach should not be to judge or demonise mothers who make that choice; not least when there is allegedly a deal of pressure on them from doctors to make it. Yet, as Heidi, Liz and Don’t Screen Us Out boldly hold a mirror up to the fashionably progressive who preach a doctrine of ever-greater ‘inclusivity’, it could well be a golden opportunity to redress the current imbalance of the scales that tip in favour of individualistic autonomy, and direct them back toward Christian civilisation’s bedrock principle of the sanctity of human life. Maybe even convincing some of our liberal allies of its absolute value and dignity along the way.
Momentum is building for those who abhor the eradication of people with the extra chromosome from our midst. Last year, Positive About Down Syndrome released 'Sharing the News', a report highlighting discrimination against parents expecting babies with the condition (46% of them said they were re-offered an abortion after refusing one). Culturally, the woke mecca that is the National Theatre staged the successful Jellyfish, whose protagonist and lead actress Sarah Gordy has DS and explicitly tackled the prospect of the syndrome's 'extinction', albeit in passing.
Meanwhile, elsewhere figures such as esteemed historian Tom Holland were making renewed efforts to remind us of our Judeo-Christian heritage. A masterclass in communicating that to the intellectual elites: Tom Holland's Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind was the tour de force blockbuster of popular history in 2019, and makes a scintillating case for the classicist's epiphany that in his moral worldview he is neither Roman nor Greek, "but thoroughly and proudly Christian", (and, for that matter, so are we all).
Holland, for my money, is also the gold standard in his ability to have the ear of the chattering intelligentsia while obviously, privately, being a One Nation conservative. And (just in case you thought I hadn't noticed) the coronavirus crisis and the craze for 'staying at home, saving lives' will leave an indelible imprint on our moral discourse. The theology professor and First Things columnist C.C. Pecknold tweeted the intriguing prediction that among the pandemic's plus points (we all have them) is the way that its enclosing constraints on our autonomy is showing up "the absurdity of the mindless mantra: ‘my body, my choice’". Perhaps it’s possible that with rediscovery of old ideas that so shaped the civilisation that made us, we may once again value lives like Heidi’s.
But that's all, quite literally, academic. When the fog of viral war clears, we can be sure that Heidi and her supporters will be back at the frontline of their own struggle, with their own masterful ability to win the ear of modern liberal Britain. Heidi advises doubters to meet someone with Down's Syndrome and “really get to know them, so they can see that there's a person behind that chromosome".
It may sound like it's straight out of the social justice warrior's 2019 handbook, but it might just work. We should back her to the hilt.
