Comments on: Mothers being encouraged to have late term abortions for Down syndrome and Spina Bifida https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/ Advocating for people with Down syndrome Wed, 04 May 2016 23:50:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.8 By: Street’s euthanasia bill a grave threat to Downs community | Reject Assisted Suicide Reject Assisted Suicide https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-514 Mon, 24 Mar 2014 21:58:43 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-514 […] we can recognise the negative bias many of them have towards our community. The type of bias where at Waikato and Auckland Hospitals they encourage late term abortions for planned and wanted pregnanc… Maybe some of these pro-euthansia “certifying medical practitioners” think people with Down […]

]]> By: T. Zohs https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-489 Tue, 18 Feb 2014 05:07:00 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-489 I totally agree that the industry looks on these scans as an opportunity to weed out the babies who have disabilities, but I still proceeded with the scans even though I would NEVER abort my baby because I wanted to see my baby and know that he was all right. We had a miscarriage at twelve weeks and I desperately wish that I had had a chance to see him or her just that once. Also, I had a friend that decided to skip the twelve week scan because she wouldn’t abort no matter if there was a problem or not. The problem was that her baby had died and her body carried on as if she were pregnant and she didn’t find out she had miscarried until she was 20 weeks along after her midwife couldn’t find the heartbeat after several visits.

]]> By: Saving Downs rejects Otago University’s discriminatory paper - ProLife NZ https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-307 Wed, 10 Jul 2013 14:53:11 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-307 […] policy (non-directive counselling) as fact in practice. This blog outlines the testimonies of those mothers who have recently been encouraged to have late term abortions following a diagnosis of Down …. In New Zealand we know that non-directive counselling is absent in many cases, and that women are […]

]]> By: Street’s Euthanasia Bill a Grave Threat to the Community - Right to Life New Zealand https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-283 Tue, 25 Jun 2013 07:31:43 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-283 […] Maybe we would give all doctors the benefit of the doubt that they will comply with the law. But, we can recognise the negative bias many of them have towards our community. The type of bias where at Waikato and Auckland Hospitals they encourage late term abortions for planned and wanted pregnanc… […]

]]> By: An open letter to BPAS chief Ann Furedi: Disability is not “tragic”, UK inquiry is welcome | ProLife NZ https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-128 Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:01:45 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-128 […] a diagnosis of a disability. It is not an issue confined to the UK, it happens in many countries including New Zealand. Every blog site that advocates on this issue has countless testimonies from mothers who have not […]

]]> By: Mothers being encouraged to have illegal late in pregnancy abortions for Down syndrome and Spina Bifidia | LifeChoice https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-82 Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:32:33 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-82 […] Click here to read the rest of this post. /* […]

]]> By: Stella McLeod https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-80 Fri, 02 Nov 2012 09:06:00 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-80 I haven’t looked at pregnancy books for some time now, but 23 years ago I discovered that the quickest way to find spina bifida and Down syndrome in most pregnancy books was to look under A in the index. Abortion, spina bifida and Down syndrome were nearly always mentioned on the same page. I guess these days you might have to look under T for termination.

]]> By: Nikki Frittmann https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-79 Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:59:00 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-79 I am a woman with Spina Bifida, and I lead a very full and satisfying life. When I was a child, my Mother (a former nurse), as a favour to a friend who was a Nursing Matron, used to visit Mums who had just had babies with Spina Bifida, to reassure them based on her experience that life with a child with this condition wasn’t as bleak as they may have been thinking. Of course, this was in the days before antenatal screening, so the first these precious Mums had learned of their babies’ conditions was at birth – just like my parents.

Now, some 40 years later, I would like to do the same thing for the parents of today – visit them and talk about how it is possible for a child with Spina Bifida to live life to the fullest, as I do. There is support (much more now, I should think, than in those days) for them if they need it, and for the baby, life with a disability is not ‘cruel’, we are not ‘suffering’ necessarily, we just are mostly getting on with it, as having a disability is all we know.

If anybody reading this has any ideas of how I could do this, I’d love to hear from you. Please PM me on Facebook. Thank you.

]]> By: Suzy Dymock https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-78 Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:22:00 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-78 yes-we’ve had this “Quality Improved” screening programme in nz now for sometime-its time for a full and thoroughly comprehensive review by independent, non-biased groups. This information should not have to be obtained by concerned parents of disabled children-it is the responsibility of the govt to be open and frank about all such programmes. The review is to include information such as the number of babies with disabilities being aborted and the devastating effects this is having on the disabled community; the negative and lasting effects of aborting a disabled baby; pressure placed on parents to abort; bias from clinicians; discrimination against disabled babies; resultant negative attitudes re the Disabled as a result of such a programme; the degree/stats of improved care screening provides to babies versus the negative effects (i.e the small percentage of interventions that support life versus the number of abortions) etc etc. All of this must be made available for the public to see. Society is entitled to receive the whole story here and not just the bits the govt, the NSU, the bean counters and the researching professors & geneticisits want us to hear.

]]> By: Suzy Dymock https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/mothers-being-encouraged-to-have-late-term-abortions-for-down-syndrome-and-spina-bifida/#comment-77 Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:08:00 +0000 https://www.savingdownsyndrome.org/?p=3454#comment-77 Couldn’t agree more Stella. It does need to be labelled for what it truly is (why beat about the bush) and that is that it is a “detect and destroy” screening programme. My sister who was pregnant with her baby at 41 after I had had my baby with Down syndrome and who refused all screening tests was referred to by all clinicians as “the woman who refuses to be tested” and this was not at all for reasons of providing life-affirming intervention-it was aimed at aborting the baby should it prove to have DS. This attitude is now becoming entrenched in New Zealand pre-natal “care”. Time to nip it in the bud now and return pregnancy to its rightful place as a natural life process and not an illness.

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