Doubt over 'disability abortions'

"The advantage of the [current] law is that it allows the doctors to work together with parents to deal with each individual case on its own merits," he says, adding that if a legal precedent is set in the Jepson case, it would bring grave repercussions for doctors.

"If a doctor terminates because a baby has Down syndrome, and someone else argues this is not a severe handicap and it goes to court and the judge agrees, then the doctor is retrospectively found guilty of a murder," Dr. Nicolaides says.

Abortion of a disabled fetus is a very different issue from early pregnancy terminations. By the time disability is diagnosed, the fetus may be as old as 20 weeks, and will normally be eagerly awaited and cherished by its parents. The mother-to-be is visibly pregnant and may have started to feel the baby's presence, and the families are expectant, often excitedly so. The termination, therefore, may be highly traumatic.

In short, says Ms. Furedi, it's an agonizing decision, not a casual one.

"Women do not request abortion lightly at this stage in pregnancy," she says. "It is something that is best decided by them and not the courts, politicians, or interfering religious people."

With fewer than 1,000 disability terminations in Britain each year, they constitute less than 1 percent of the 190,000 abortions conducted here annually. But some express concern that they could become far more prevalent.

Technological advances in genetics mean that all kind of disorders may be detectable in the womb. Antiabortion activists argue that this will lead to babies with potentially treatable disorders and genetic "markers" being "screened out."

Jonathan Bartley, director of the theological think tank Ekklesia, says that disability is so marginalized in society that few parents will choose to preserve "imperfect" fetuses. "We expect parents to make informed decisions, having never come into contact with disability," says Mr. Bartley. "Parents are going to be steered in the direction of abortion.

"It is a slippery slope," he adds. "It's quite clear abortions are happening for what can be very minor disabilities. You can't tell in the womb how disabled the child is going to be."

But the fear of rampant eugenics - the selective manipulation of births - may be premature.

Last month, a British government panel said embryo sex selection should be banned. Society is still a long way from offering people control over the physical attributes of their offspring.

Nicolaides, of the Foetal Medical Center, is not concerned that disability abortions are a natural precursor to eugenics.

"The argument that we are going down the slippery slope and having abortions because of our desire for [a certain] shape of face and body of our child is interesting because of the eugenics argument, but I never felt it was a real danger," he says.

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