Buttigieg Explains to 7-year-old Girl That Killing Unborn Babies With Abortion Is Ok
"What kind of society do yous want to live in?": Within the land where Down syndrome is disappearing
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With the rising of prenatal screening tests across Europe and the United States, the number of babies born with Down syndrome has significantly decreased, but few countries take come every bit close to eradicating Down syndrome births as Iceland.
Since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Republic of iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women -- close to 100 percent -- who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy.
While the tests are optional, the authorities states that all expectant mothers must be informed near availability of screening tests, which reveal the likelihood of a kid being born with Down syndrome. Effectually fourscore to 85 percent of pregnant women cull to take the prenatal screening exam, according to Landspitali University Infirmary in Reykjavik.
"CBSN: On Consignment" headed to Republic of iceland with CBS News contributor Elaine Quijano to investigate what's factoring into the high termination rates.
Using an ultrasound, blood test and the mother's historic period, the examination, chosen the Combination Test, determines whether the fetus will have a chromosome abnormality, the most common of which results in Down syndrome. Children born with this genetic disorder have distinctive facial bug and a range of developmental issues. Many people built-in with Down syndrome can live full, good for you lives, with an boilerplate lifespan of around 60 years.
Other countries aren't lagging also far behind in Down's syndrome termination rates. Co-ordinate to the most recent information available, the United states has an estimated termination rate for Down syndrome of 67 percent (1995-2011); in France it's 77 per centum (2015); and Denmark, 98 percent (2015). The police force in Iceland permits abortion afterwards xvi weeks if the fetus has a deformity -- and Down's syndrome is included in this category.
With a population of around 330,000, Iceland has on average only one or ii children born with Down syndrome per yr, sometimes after their parents received inaccurate test results. (In the U.S., according to the National Down syndrome Lodge, near 6,000 babies with Down's syndrome are born each yr.)
"Babies with Down syndrome are still being born in Republic of iceland," said Hulda Hjartardottir, head of the Prenatal Diagnosis Unit at Landspitali Academy Hospital, where around 70 percent of Icelandic children are born. "Some of them were low gamble in our screening test, and so nosotros didn't notice them in our screening."
When Thordis Ingadottir was pregnant with her third child at the age of 40, she took the screening exam. The results showed her chances of having a child with Down syndrome were very slim, odds of 1 in 1,600. However, the screening test is only 85 percent accurate. That year, 2009, three babies were built-in with Down syndrome in Iceland, including Ingadottir's daughter Agusta, who is now vii.
According to Ingadottir, three babies born with Downwardly syndrome is "quite more usual. Normally there are two, in the terminal few years." Since the nativity of her daughter, Ingadottir has go an activist for the rights of people with Downwardly syndrome.
Every bit Agusta grows upward, "I will promise that she volition be fully integrated on her ain terms in this society. That'due south my dream," Ingadottir said. "Isn't that the bones needs of life? What kind of society do yous want to live in?"
Geneticist Kari Stefansson is the founder of deCODE Genetics, a company that has studied nearly the entire Icelandic population's genomes. He has a unique perspective on the advancement of medical technology. "My understanding is that we have basically eradicated, almost, Down syndrome from our society -- that there is inappreciably always a child with Down syndrome in Iceland anymore," he said.
Quijano asked Stefansson, "What does the 100 percent termination charge per unit, yous think, reverberate about Icelandic society?"
"It reflects a relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling," he said. "And I don't recall that heavy-handed genetic counseling is desirable. … You're having bear upon on decisions that are not medical, in a fashion."
Stefansson noted, "I don't think there'southward anything incorrect with aspiring to take healthy children, only how far nosotros should go in seeking those goals is a fairly complicated determination."
According to Hjartardottir, "We try to practice every bit neutral counseling as possible, but some people would say that just offer the examination is pointing y'all towards a sure management." Indeed, more than four out of 5 pregnant women in Iceland opt for the prenatal screening examination.
For expectant mother Bergthori Einarsdottir, who chose to accept the examination, knowing that most women did and then helped steer her decision. "Information technology was not pressure, but they told me that most women did it," she said. "It did affect me maybe a little chip."
Over at Landspitali University Hospital, Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality. They speak to her when deciding whether to continue or end their pregnancies. Olafsdottir tells women who are wrestling with the decision or feelings of guilt: "This is your life — you take the correct to choose how your life will look like."
She showed Quijano a prayer bill of fare inscribed with the date and tiny footprints of a fetus that was terminated.
Quijano noted, "In America, I think some people would be dislocated about people calling this 'our child,' proverb a prayer or maxim farewell or having a priest come in -- considering to them abortion is murder."
Olafsdottir responded, "Nosotros don't expect at abortion as a murder. We await at it as a thing that we ended. We concluded a possible life that may have had a huge complication... preventing suffering for the child and for the family unit. And I think that is more correct than seeing it as a murder -- that's so blackness and white. Life isn't blackness and white. Life is greyness."
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/
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