Antonia Tully, blogpost. 

Last week “The Daily Mail” ran a headline: “Why I’m risking a pregnancy at 48 after losing twins with Down’s Syndrome”. Actually, the writer, journalist Olivia Buxton, didn’t “lose” her two daughters, she made the decision to kill them by abortion.

Ms Buxton, of course, doesn’t use such blunt language in her article. Instead she tells us she chose to abort her two babies “for their sake” and for the “emotional wellbeing of our other children”.

Poor Olivia describes her decision as “shattering” and tells us that “for a week I barely slept”. She went to the abortion clinic in January 2019. A pro-life vigil was in progress. The sign “Love Them Both” made her “shudder”.  She records that her partner, Perry, said to the pro-lifers: “You’ve no idea why we are here”. (Oh but we do, Perry. You were there because you had swallowed the lie that you had a choice and that you were doing the best thing for your babies. But we could have told you something truer and better than that.)

After the abortion Olivia tells us that she felt “utterly bereft” and for months afterwards was emotionally “unstable”. But now, at five months pregnant she feels like “the luckiest woman in the world to be pregnant at all”. Her unborn baby is also extremely lucky. This baby gets to live because he or she has made the health grade (tests show no Down’s syndrome). Consequently, this little one has made it through the “choice” barrier.

At the heart of this story is the deep and persistent prejudice against disability and the supreme right “to choose”. Olivia and Perry aborted the babies they didn’t want and are now continuing a pregnancy with a baby they do want.  Who dares to challenge this sacred prerogative?

Well, Dominic Lawson wasted no time in firing back to defend unborn babies with Down’s syndrome. His headline in “The Daily Mail” ran: “Why don’t doctors ever have anything good to say about people with Down’s syndrome.” He calls out Professor Kypros Nicolaides of the Fetal Medicine Centre in Harley Street, London.  Professor Nicolaides is a well-known advocate of pre-natal screening, the aim of which is to eliminate disabled babies by abortion. It was Nicolaides who gave Olivia and Perry a bleak, albeit possibly accurate, outlook for their twin daughters with Down’s syndrome. After that the babies didn’t stand a chance.

Mr Lawson is the unashamedly doting father of his adult daughter Domenica who has Down’s syndrome. He says “it sounds a bit soppy” but Domenica “brings joy to everyone she meets and not just her parents”.

Domenica is not the only person with Down’s syndrome whose name appears in the national press on a fairly regular basis. Heidi Crowter, who has Down’s syndrome, received extensive media coverage when she got married https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-53310630. We often see Olly Philips, son of actress Sally Philips, who campaigns against pre-natal screening.

Olivia Buxton she says that she is “well aware” that many mothers “go on to have beautiful Down’s syndrome children who lead happy and healthy lives”. So positive messages about Down’s people do get through. But that’s not enough. Olivia is happy for other people to have Down’s children, but not her.

Mr Lawson wonders whether people who say, as did Olivia, that they are aborting a disabled child for the child’s sake and not because they feel they couldn’t cope with one, make their decision based “on fear, rather than fact”.

That’s not something I wonder about. I think that the propaganda around abortion is so strong and the “right to choose” so deeply ingrained, that these, and not fear or facts, decide the fate of disabled babies.

Mr Lawson says he does not criticise Olivia Buxton for her decision to abort her unborn twins. It will have been he says “the outcome of an agonising decision between her and her partner.”  I won’t criticise her either. But I think her “agonising decision” is at the root of this tragedy. The lives of Olivia’s unborn twins hung in the balance of her choice to let them live or not. We will never stop discrimination against the disabled or abortion until we stop treating children as choices we make and start accepting them as gifts we receive.