Church criticises Down’s abortion rate

THE Church of England is to lobby the Government over a rising number of Down’s syndrome abortions.

Religious leaders have raised concerns that a growing number of parents are choosing to terminate their pregnancy if they discover the child will be born with the condition, sometimes because the dignosis is being presented as “bad news” from the outset, they say.

The Church’s governing body will debate a call to regulate providers of noninvasive prenatal testing – a relatively new test for the condition which carries no risk of miscarriage, unlike older procedures such as amniocentesis.

In a document entitled Valuing People with Down’s syndrome, the Church warned: “In countries such as Iceland and Denmark, which have almost universal screening and close to 100 per cent termination rates, there is a real possibility that people with Down’s syndrome will effectively disappear from their populations.”

In 2010, 482 pregnancies were terminated after a Down’s syndrome diagnosis. In 2016 there were 706. During the same period, there was a fall of 6,000 in terms of overall terminations.