The British Court of appeal has rejected the appeal filed by a woman with this syndrome and the mother of a child who also suffers from it
The United Kingdom has endorsed aborting children with Down syndrome up to the moment of delivery. The British Court of Appeal has confirmed this Friday the legality of the current standard by rejecting the appeal filed by a woman with this syndrome and the mother of a child who also suffers from it.
Heidi Crowter, a 27-year-old woman from Coventry, England who has Down syndrome, and Marie Lea-Wilson, mother of a boy, Aidan, who also has Down syndrome, brought the suit against the Department of Health and Social Care. with the hope that a section contemplated in the Abortion Law will be eliminated on the understanding that it is an example of “inequality”. Although current legislation in England, Wales and Scotland allows abortion as long as it is done within the first 24 weeks of the gestation period, the law also allows abortion up to the moment of birth when there is a “substantial risk”, “if the child born suffered from physical or mental anomalies or severe handicaps’, which include Down’s syndrome. As the EFE Agency points out, last September British judges undertook to find a balance between the rights of the unborn and those of women. For the judges of the Court of Appeals, the current legislation does not interfere with the rights of the “disabled who are alive” despite openly discriminating against those who suffer from Down syndrome.
THEY WILL CONTINUE TO APPEAL
Despite their decision, the judges assume that “this court recognizes that many people with Down syndrome and other disabilities will be upset and offended that this diagnosis of severe disability during pregnancy is contemplated by law as justification for abortion, and that they might regard it as implying that their own lives are worth less.” Last July, lawyer Jason Coppell, who represented Crowter and Lea-Wilson, considered that the language used in that law was considered by some people “offensive and unacceptable.” “I am very upset that fetuses with Down syndrome can be aborted right up to the moment of birth. This tells me that I am not valued and that I am worth much less than a person who does not have Down syndrome,” Crowter said today. The woman, who does not rule out taking her case to the Supreme Court – the country’s highest judicial instance – assured that she will continue to “fight” for this cause, considering that she has already managed to “inform and change hearts and minds and changed people’s opinions about the law.”
