Mom Refused to Abort Her Baby With Down Syndrome, Slams Doctors Who Pressured Her

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   May 2, 2020   |   11:59AM   |   Washington, DC

Stories upon stories keep surfacing of parents being pressured to abort their unborn babies because they have Down syndrome.

Australian chef and mother-of-two Jackie Tang recently described the “eugenic” discrimination that she and her son, Noah, have faced ever since she was pregnant with him.

Writing at The Mighty, Tang said doctors repeatedly pressured her to abort Noah, starting when she was 20-weeks pregnant.

At the time, an ultrasound revealed problems with Noah’s heart, a blockage in his bowels and other signs that he may have Down syndrome, she said.

“I thought, ‘OK, I’m happy to work with that,”’ Tang told Kidspot. “Your life doesn’t have to suffer because you’ve got a special needs kid.”

But her doctors had very different thoughts about her son’s value. She said they encouraged her to have an amniocentesis to confirm whether Noah had the disorder before it was “too late” for her to abort him.

“I was told my baby was dying and would not survive to term,” Tang remembered after receiving the results of that test. “I was given three options: to let him die in the womb and deliver him stillborn, to have him delivered immediately with no likelihood of survival, or to prolong the pregnancy as much as possible by presenting at the hospital three times a week (from memory) for a few hours each visit, for steroid injections and monitoring of the baby’s heartbeat. I chose the third option.”

She gave birth to Noah on May 14, 2012 when she was 34-weeks pregnant. Tang said her son fought through many medical problems, multiple surgeries and more – and she had to fight right along with him.

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“I had a lot of pressure from doctors to terminate Noah’s treatment. One doctor told me Noah would be a drain on public resources, that he’d be a vegetable and my life would never be the same,” she said.

Tang said she was told that Noah would be a burden on her and society, and she was made to feel guilty for continuing his medical treatment.

“Doctor 2 called for a meeting,” she wrote. “She said that they were running out of places from which to draw blood from Noah (which they had to do more than once a day for testing) and she asked how I felt to hear him scream as they pinned him down to do so (sometimes with my help) when he only had about two cups of blood in him (a fact that a different doctor in NICU later disputed). Could I bear to see him suffering?”

But because of their perseverance, Tang and Noah proved the doctors wrong. Today, Noah is a happy child who attends school with his peers.

“… Noah has thrived. All of the residual holes in his heart have healed without need for further surgery, and he’s the happiest little kid I know,” his mother wrote at The Mighty. “I’m hoping that by sharing my experience, future parents can be better prepared for the insidious eugenics practiced by some in the medical profession here in Australia, accept that doctors often get things wrong, and claim their right to stand up to them when they do.”

The problem is not limited to Australia. Parents in North America and Europe have related similar experiences after their unborn babies were diagnosed with disabilities like Down syndrome. Oregon mother Rachel Prescott, whose twins have Down syndrome, also recently shared how doctors repeatedly pressured her to abort them. LifeNews.com has reported about dozens of similar stories.

In America, some states have passed laws to protect unborn babies with disabilities from discrimination, but the abortion industry is trying to overturn the laws in court.

Down syndrome discrimination is a problem across the world. Several years ago, CBS News report shocked the nation with its exposure of the discriminatory trend. According to the report, nearly 100 percent of unborn babies who test positive for Down syndrome are aborted in Iceland. The rate in France was 77 percent in 2015, 90 percent in the United Kingdom and 67 percent in the United States between 1995 and 2011, according to CBS.