A Scottish mother continues to endure vile mockery more than four years after she chose life for her unborn son with disabilities.
Jennifer Gellatly’s son Jayden died in 2016, shortly before his second birthday, the Evening Telegraph reports. He suffered from an endocarditis infection, fluid on the brain and other health problems.
The Dundee, Scotland mother said she and her family repeatedly have been targeted by online trolls who mock Jayden’s appearance and say he should have been aborted.
This week, Gellatly’s family called the police after finding a harassing message scrawled on a lamppost near their home, according to the report. The graffiti specifically targeted her 9-year-old son Daniel Docherty.
Based on photos from the local news, the sloppily written message appears to say, “Daniel Docherty’s brother is dead. Ha ha ha ha.” The graffiti also includes a smiley face.
Gellatly said she thinks a child may have written it, possibly someone from her son’s school. She said they contacted the school as well as the police.
“It clearly appears to have been written by a child who maybe doesn’t fully understand the situation,” she said. “Their parents probably aren’t aware of what has gone on. If my children had written something like this mocking someone’s deceased relative I would be horrified.”
Police told the local news they are investigating.
“I almost can’t believe just how close to our front door this graffiti is,” Gellatly said. “My daughter Jessica had been made aware of it and had shown me an image of the lamp-post. … To make a joke at grieving families expense is vile.”
The Gellatlys are not alone. Families of born and unborn children with disabilities often face discrimination and a slew of hostile comments for demonstrating that their children’s lives are valuable.
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Earlier this year, a Twitter troll mocked a disability rights advocate’s daughter who has disabilities in a post promoting eugenic abortions. Twitter eventually removed the post and updated its hate speech guidelines to include harassment of people with disabilities.
Parents of children with disabilities also frequently report feeling pressure to have abortions. Many now are speaking out about the discrimination that their children faced before birth. In January, a British couple said they felt pressured to abort their unborn daughter at 37 weeks of pregnancy because she was diagnosed with Down syndrome. In 2015, a British journalist wrote a troubling piece about how doctors encouraged him and his wife to abort their late-term unborn son just because he had a cleft lip.
And in 2016, a Florida mother’s letter to her doctor went viral after the doctor pressured her to abort her unborn daughter with Down syndrome. She refused, and later wrote a letter urging her former doctor to see how valuable her daughter’s life is.
