Antonia Tully blogpost

I have never met Dominic Lawson but I regard him as a pro-lifer who, through his newspaper articles, gets in touch occasionally and who always has something worthwhile to say.  Mr Lawson is a distinguished journalist. He has been the editor of “The Spectator” and of “The Sunday Telegraph”. He has been columnist for the “Independent” and is also a leading columnist for “The Sunday Times”. He is someone who during a long career in the mainstream media has reached millions of people. And one of the topics he has written about regularly since June 1995 is his daughter, Domenica.

Domenica has Down’s syndrome and her father has been a constant champion of her right to life and her worth as a human being. He also rarely fails to express the sheer joy of being her father. Mr Lawson wrote about Domenica on 17 June 1995, 16 days after her birth, in an article titled “All you need is life”, which more or less says it all.

Of course he was attacked for taking this view. Ten days later, anti-life agony aunt Clare Rayner (1931-2010) wrote an article in the “Independent” referring to Mr Lawson’s “disappointment” and “pain” at having a daughter with Down’s syndrome and castigated him for opposing the practice of testing for abnormalities followed by abortion.

Yet pain and disappointment do not feature at all in Mr Lawson’s articles about his daughter. Writing in 2008 he said; When I look at Domenica I see someone with a vast joy in just being alive and I am indescribably happy that she is.” In 2012 he said he did not want ‘a cure’ for Down’s syndrome, he loves Domenica just as she is.  In 2016 he observed: “It’s a strange thing, but generally it is the most intelligent people who are the most miserable and who are the most subject to depression. They don’t tend to say, as Domenica often does: ‘I love my life’”.

Mr Lawson is a non-believer. Yet this has never seemed to get in the way of his passionate defence of the right to life of people with Down’s syndrome. Speaking out against pre-natal testing he wrote: “… [Down’s syndrome] is not the condition which would be eradicated. It would still occur with exactly the same frequency among unborn children: it is just that they will not be allowed to emerge to join the rest of humanity.”

Any programme of weeding out disabled people before they are born should be called by its proper name: eugenics. And Mr Lawson is again writing in a national newspaper pointing out that, in the current wave of toppling the statues of people with a murky past, “one woman’s vile history is overlooked”.

Who is this woman? Marie Stopes: the campaigner for eugenics whose passion for eliminating those she considered of inferior stock, is rightly denounced under Mr Lawson’s pen.  Stopes admired Hitler greatly and sent him a collection of love poems.

Mr Lawson describes how Stopes opposed the marriage of her son to Mary Wallis (daughter of the man who invented the wartime bouncing bomb). Mr Lawson quotes Stopes saying: “She has an inherited disease of the eyes which not only makes her wear hideous glasses so that it is horrid to look at her . . . I have the horror of our line being so contaminated . . .”.

Stopes wanted to rid the world of undesirables, even people who wear glasses. And, fittingly, this woman’s name is most associated with an international organisation which promotes the killing of unborn children around the world, not least in Africa.

Marie Stopes, whose name as Mr Lawson points out is “advertised in magazines and on hoardings” and “pulls in many millions of pounds of taxpayers' money every year”.

Marie Stopes, who had her portrait on a postage stamp in 2008 and who came close to having a statue erected in her honour in Manchester.

Thank you Mr Lawson for exposing the rank hypocrisy of a nation which thinks it supports disabled people, but which holds the likes of Marie Stopes in high regard. Marie Stopes, whose legacy is millions of dead babies around the world. Marie Stopes, whose mission was to wipe out beautiful people like Domenica Lawson.

Domenica celebrated her 25 birthday this year, with a lockdown party. Her father wrote: “The high point was a 'Zoom disco' … She was, of course, the star of the show.”  Marie Stopes would be turning in her grave. Let her.