Doctors tried to get me to abort my baby at full-term because he had Down’s Syndrome
A PRENATAL test which diagnoses Down’s Syndrome has resulted in a 30 per cent drop in the number of babies born, new research reveals.
The figures, released by 26 hospital trusts in England, come as a plan is for the same test to be rolled out to all NHS hospitals in the near future – allowing parents to abort their babies if they don’t wish to carry to full-term.
One in every 1,000 babies in the UK are born with the condition – which is caused by the presence of an extra chromosome and affects intellectual and physical ability.
Mothers are able to terminate their pregnancies up to full-term after having the test, but Cheryl Bilsborrow, 45, a clinical reflexologist from Lancashire, who had the NIPT test and went onto have a child Down’s syndrome, thinks these tests are discriminatory and wrong.
Here, she tells Sun Online her reasons.
Cheryl says: “My two-year-old son Hector is the most wonderful baby.
He’s got beautiful white hair and blue eyes, and he is always smiling and laughing, blowing kisses and coming for hugs.
But when I was pregnant I was made to feel like his life would have no value and that I should abort him. Why? Because he has Down’s Syndrome.
And now, as it’s been revealed that there’s been a 30-percent drop in the number of babies born with Down syndrome in U.K. hospitals, I need to speak out.
Because this is a national travesty.
‘Really sorry, bad news’
When I fell pregnant with Hector, I was 43, and it was my fourth pregnancy. The hospital suggested I had a screening test for Down’s, and I went along with it, without giving it much thought.
The result – which showed that I was at high risk of having a baby with the condition – was totally unexpected and I started to cry at the news.
I phoned my husband David, 53, and we decided we wanted to know for sure and found a private clinic offering NIPT for £400.
The test was a normal blood test in my arm that extracts the placental DNA from the mother’s blood. It was quite simple and easy, though waiting 10 days for the result was agony.
It was all so scary. I couldn’t stop worrying.
I wondered how poorly my baby would be, and whether he would die inside me before he was born.
I couldn’t get myself together in the first few weeks after that devastating phone call and I kept crying all the time as I was so scared and anxious.
I even took myself away to a hotel for the weekend on my own because my anxiety was through the roof.
It was making me ill and stressing the baby out as well.
Then the phone call came – it’s one I’ll never forget.
“Really sorry for the bad news,” the clinician said, “but there’s a 99 per cent chance you are having a baby with Down’s syndrome.”
The woman’s voice was low and grave, pity seeping into every word.
Really sorry. Bad news.
It spoke volumes to me about the perception of children with Down’s syndrome.
To most, they were a curse, a problem — the opposite of what any parent would want.
‘These tests scare women into aborting their babies’
For the next few weeks, I oscillated between feeling panicked and stressed and holding onto that minuscule one per cent of hope that maybe, just maybe, our baby would be born fine.
It ruined my pregnancy and I also started to feel angry that I’d been pressured into having that first test at the hospital, which then pressured me into having NIPT.
These tests and the scary, negative way in which the results are currently framed are leading pregnant women to abort their much-wanted babies.
Now, having had Hector, I know there was nothing to be frightened of.
But the joys of having a baby with Down’s Syndrome aren’t spoken about when the NIPT test results first come back.
Pressured into terminations
Once a woman has had a “negative” NIPT test, the discussion focuses on “options”.
Each time I went back for my midwife appointments over the pregnancy, they spoke to me about the possibility of abortion,
“There is always termination,” one midwife said tentatively.
I shook my head, angry at the suggestion. “No,” I replied. “Never.”
There was no offer of counselling, no discussion about how my life might be enhanced by this baby.
Abort and get rid seemed to be the only answer.
What if the midwife had phoned me and said: “Please don’t be alarmed. You’re having a baby with Down’s syndrome. We can offer you some counselling and help you meet a family with a child with Down’s syndrome so you can learn more.”
Instead, they made out it was the worst news in the world.
Down's Syndrome: The facts
- Down’s syndrome is caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in a baby’s cells.
- In the majority of cases, Down’s syndrome is not an inherited condition. Down’s syndrome usually occurs because of a chance happening at the time of conception.
- A woman’s chances of giving birth to a child with Down syndrome increase with age because older eggs have a greater risk of improper chromosome division.
- A woman’s risk of conceiving a child with Down syndrome increases after 35 years of age.
- For every 1,000 babies born, one will have Down’s syndrome.About 750 babies with Down’s syndrome are born in the UK each year.
- There are approximately 40,000 people with Down’s syndrome living in the UK.
- People with Down’s syndrome will have some level of learning disability.
‘It seemed like babies with Down’s had no value’
Even, at 38 weeks, when I went for a scan, the sonographer said: “You do know we abort babies full term with Down’s syndrome.”
Shocked, I replied, “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
The message came loud and clear: babies with Down’s were of no value.
But they couldn’t be more wrong.
Hector was born with hypotonia (low muscle tone), but with the help of occupational and physiotherapists, he now pulls himself up to standing, holds my hand and is starting to walk, He’s even doing child modelling.
At first we had to blend his food because he kept choking, but now he eats everything he can pick up with his fingers – fish fingers, chips, pasta, peas, the lot.
He loves watching Mr Tumble on the telly and is always tinkering on the piano and forever singing.
He’s started to talk too and says words like ‘baba’ and ‘dada’.
My mum, Joan, 76, lives with us and he’ll often sit on the bed with her and she’ll sing to him and he’ll sing back – it’s so sweet.
‘This test should be banned so more babies like Hector can be born’
So given babies like my son can live perfectly happy, normal lives, why are millions of pounds are being spent on Down’s Syndrome screening each year – which in turn encourages mothers to abort their unborn children?
About a fifth of the hospital trusts that offer maternity services currently offer NIPT.
But the plan is for the new test to be rolled out to remaining NHS hospitals at some time in the near future.
It will be offered to pregnant women who are found, in preliminary screening involving a blood test and ultrasound scan, to have a high chance of a baby with Down’s syndrome.
I think this would be disastrous.
latest news
There is still so much stigma and stereotype around Down’s. But studies have shown that vast majority of people of people with Down’s, and their families, are happy.
And it breaks my heart to think that so many babies, like my Hector, could be robbed of their chance to live happy lives.