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Interview AN37

Interview AN37

Age at Interview: 29
Background: Children: Two (ages 2 and 1), Occupation: Mother - full-time mother, Father (age 37 at interview)- Pastor (former doctor), Marital status: Married.

Brief outline:Couple declined screening on principle in previous two and current pregnancy. Had a scan at around 20 weeks in two pregnancies for dating purposes only.

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He did not want screening because as a Christian he feels it undermines people with disabilities and he would never consider termination.
Print We would rather not have known. Obviously, if it is something like cardiac defect where they might need to do emergency surgery as soon as the baby is born, that's a different situation. But that's so rare that we felt that, weighing that up with basically not wanting to know if there was something wrong - because I think, psychologically, there's a big difference between having a baby in front of you who's just been born and then discovering that that child has Down's syndrome or something, that obviously no-one would want their child to have - but that's very different from discovering that through some screening. And I think, psychologically, it's much easier to cope with if you actually have the child there in front of you, than if it's an anonymous person that you've never actually seen. And I think that there's probably been a tendency, as a result of screening to effectively undermine people with disabilities. Because, you know, if the majority of screening is for people with disability and then the option is offered to parents, “Do you want to go for an abortion?” You know, it's not, what's that saying to those who do have Down's syndrome or those who do have other abnormalities? I think that people need to be valued and a phrase that my wife and I have often used is that, you know, the baby God gives to us is the baby that we'll look after, and if that's the child with whatever, we'll still love and care for that child.

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