Next month, British MPs will begin debating whether or not to prohibit discriminatory abortions for preborn children after 24 weeks. Currently, those children — including those with Down syndrome — can be legally killed in the womb all the way until birth.
MP Sir Liam Fox is leading a campaign to change the law so that discriminatory abortions must follow the country’s abortion guidelines, which allow abortion for any reason until 24 weeks. If successful, children with Down syndrome and other diagnoses will be protected from abortion after 24 weeks.
“With cross-party support, I will be tabling an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to equalise the time limit in line with our disability and equality legislation,” Fox announced. “Surely we cannot accept in the 21st century that people with Down’s syndrome are second-class citizens in our country.”
“There is considerable cross-party support to remove an anomaly in UK law which allows those with Down’s syndrome to be aborted up until 40 weeks,” Fox told The Times. “Many of us believe this is utterly against the purpose of our equality legislation and treats those with Down’s syndrome as second-class citizens when it comes to their rights.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would not support the amendment, noting it had “been longstanding convention that it would be for Parliament to decide whether to make any changes to the law on abortion and these issues have always been treated as an individual matter of conscience.”
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The UK’s abortion law has been challenged numerous times in the past few years, with one young activist with Down syndrome, Heidi Crowter, leading the charge. Crowter had brought the issue all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that “it is downright discrimination that people with disabilities are treated differently.”
“This law makes me feel that I am better off dead and that I am not as valued as people without Down’s syndrome,” she has said. “It boggles my mind that the law protects them and not me.”
