Said to be trying to spare women’s feelings

From the [UK] Daily Mail:

An independent British registry  reports that unborn babies with Down syndrome in the UK are being aborted at a rate twice as high as the government’s official tally.

Experts said doctors have been trying to spare women’s feelings by classifying such abortions as “social” rather than noting that a diagnosis of Down syndrome prompted the abortion.

Professor Joan Morris, the director of the National Down’s Syndrome Cytogenetic Register, warned that skewed reporting on abortion forms is yielding “wholly inaccurate data”. The register is considered highly reliable because it gathers data from hospital genetic testing labs and tracks each case individually, while the Department of Health relies on reports submitted by doctors.

Between 2004 and 2008, the NDSCR reported a total of 4,777 abortions carried out on fetuses with Down syndrome in the UK. Over the same period, the Department of Health reported 2,168 such abortions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 2:03 am and is filed under Down syndrome, abortion, prenatal diagnosis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.