26 May Lynn Ferguson says no

When the Scottish writer and comedian Lynn Ferguson was 37, she got pregnant, and there ensued an battle of wills with staff of the hospital where she was to give birth. She told the story recently on The Moth Storytelling Hour.

Almost as soon as everybody agreed that I was technically in the family way, they decided that I should have an amniocentesis. An amniocentesis is, like, an invasive test. They put a needle into the fluid here—the amniotic fluid—and it can tell you whether the baby has Down Syndrome or not. But there’s also a one percent risk that it will cause damage to the fetus, or the fetus will miscarry.

Now, you see, I am, like, totally not against risk. You know, I think it’s a matter of choice. And I like risk, I like risk. And I’m completely and utterly pro-choice. But there was no way to me that I figured they were going to do it. I mean, it wasn’t the baby’s fault that I was 37, you know. That was entirely on me. That was my decision. So I was, like, “no.”

But at every appointment, it would come up about the amniocentesis. And so I started, initially, I would kind of deal with it, you know, that way you are when you don’t want to have coffee with someone. Where you go, “Oh, damn, the amniocentesis. We will, we’ll do it—I can’t do it this week though.” You know. “Maybe next week, maybe—oh, no, my mother’s coming. No, I cannot do that.”

But as they became more insistent about it, I kind of felt I had to too. So I was like, you know, “Can this test tell me whether this child will be a jerk? Can your test tell me whether this kid is going to be one of those really screamy ones that annoys the hell out of everybody on airplanes? Can your test tell me whether this small, tiny, growing human being will mature into a fully grown adult who has some horrific affinity with Peruvian pan flute music?

“Because I’m worried about Down Syndrome. Hands up. But I’m pregnant, and I’m worried about a lot of things. So thanks very much and everything, but no.

“You know, the Down Syndrome thing, it’s not exactly what we planned, and I know it’s going to be difficult, probably, for us and for him, in ways that I don’t even know yet. But, you know, actually, personally, I think there are worse things than being Down Sydnrome…. I mean, being Down Syndrome doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, does it?”

So I said no.

Here the story takes a strange turn, and another, and another. It’s well worth hearing. But this was the passage that stuck with me.

Like Ferguson, I am completely and utterly pro-choice. But even the most passionate feminist may feel qualms about abortions performed for sex selection—especially if the goal were to avert the birth of female children. If Canadian hospitals were carrying out routine screening of pregnant women so as to offer them the choice of aborting female fetuses, I expect the practice would occasion widespread opprobrium.

Yet this is exactly the situation faced by people who live with and love men, women, and children with Down Syndrome. Many progressive Western countries not only offer, but promote, and all but insist upon, invasive tests whose main purpose, however it may be disguised in dishonest language, is to offer parents the option of aborting fetuses with Down Syndrome before they see the light of day.

I will eschew the kind of incendiary language some would apply to this practice, although I’m not sure it’s inappropriate. Instead, I urge those who have never questioned the growing practice of screening to prevent Down Syndrome births to consider how they would feel about screening to prevent female births, and ask themselves how the two differ.