A British teenager with Down syndrome is challenging lawmakers to reconsider their pro-abortion views.
Berkshire Live reports Millie Anna Prelogar, 18, of Windsor, England, met new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week and has met with other MPs recently to remind them of the value of people with Down syndrome and other disabilities.
Prelogar has been challenging these leaders to change the country’s discriminatory abortion law, which prohibits most abortions after 24 weeks but allows abortions up to birth for unborn babies with disabilities.
“Do you think I’d be better off if I had never been born?” the teenager has been asking lawmakers.
Prelogar works with the Positive About Down Syndrome and other disability rights and pro-life organizations to raise awareness about and support for individuals with the chromosomal disorder, according to the report. Recently, they launched a new campaign, You-Can’t-Put-Me-Down Syndrome, to help society understand what kinds of lives people with Down syndrome have. Many attend school and work jobs, some even go to college and get married. And individuals with Down syndrome and their families frequently say their lives are happy and fulfilling.
Some think “people with Down’s Syndrome can’t live happy, productive and fulfilled lives,” Prelogar said. But “having Down’s Syndrome is no big deal. We can do anything we set our minds to with just a little extra help and support.”
Through the campaign, Prelogar said she hopes to change both people’s minds and the law.
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“At first I was shocked and then I felt offended that the current abortion law discriminates against people like me,” she told the news outlet. “This reinforces negative stereotypes and questions the value and dignity of my life. I want the appeal judges to get rid of section 1(1)(d) of the Abortion Act so fetuses with disabilities are treated the same as all other fetuses.”
Another young woman with Down syndrome, Heidi Crowter, of Coventry, challenged the law in court last year. She said the law is “downright discrimination” because it prohibits abortions after 24 weeks on healthy unborn babies but allows abortions up to birth on unborn babies with Down syndrome and other disabilities.
Studies suggest advances in prenatal testing are connected to an increase in abortions on unborn babies with disabilities. The Telegraph reports a recent article in the European Journal of Human Genetics found that the number of babies with Down syndrome born in the United Kingdom dropped 54 percent since the non-invasive prenatal screening tests became available about a decade ago.
More than 85 percent of unborn babies who are diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted in England, according to statistics from Public Health England.
According to ABC News Australia, a recent study by Down Syndrome Australia found that “half of new parents faced discrimination and neglect from medical professionals during and after prenatal screenings.” One family told the news outlet that their doctor scheduled an abortion before even telling them that their unborn baby had Down syndrome.
Another mother from Scotland told the Daily Record that she was offered an abortion at 37 weeks of pregnancy, almost full term, because her son has Down syndrome. And British mother Emma Mellor told the BBC that she was pressured to abort her unborn daughter 15 times, including right up to the moment of her baby’s birth.
