{"id":227630,"date":"2020-07-22T12:27:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T17:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=227630"},"modified":"2020-07-21T17:08:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T22:08:58","slug":"comedian-sally-phillips-son-down-syndrome-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/comedian-sally-phillips-son-down-syndrome-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Comedian Sally Phillips: My son with Down syndrome brings ‘so much joy’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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British actress and comedian Sally Phillips is best known for her roles in movies like “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” But she’s also a mother to three children, one of whom has Down syndrome. And she’s embraced that role to the fullest, speaking out against eugenic abortion and advocating for other people with Down syndrome.<\/p>\n

In a previous interview with the Guardian<\/a>, Phillips gave the story about receiving her son’s Down syndrome diagnosis, and her decision to front a BBC documentary titled, “A World Without Down Syndrome.” After Olly, now 15, was born, she said the focus had been on her due to her c-section. “Olly scored highly on all the tests and no one noticed there was anything different about him. I noticed,” she recalled. “And I asked them to look at him. There was something about his eyes that was troubling me. It was as if his cheeks were really big and not allowing his eyes to open. I said, \u2018Does he look like that because I ate a lot of cake when I was pregnant?\u2019 They said, \u2018Yes, probably.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But his low muscle tone\u2014something most people with Down syndrome struggle with\u2014led him to have trouble eating, and it wasn’t until he was 10 days old and had lost a stunning five pounds that he was finally diagnosed.<\/p>\n

Phillips said it was difficult for her to not buy into the societal outlook of Down syndrome as something negative. \u201cThere were lots of moments during Olly\u2019s babyhood where I would think to myself, \u2018Wait a minute, I am not experiencing this as a disaster.\u2019 But you are so bought into the narrative,” she said. “All the pregnancy books refer to Down\u2019s syndrome as a \u2018defect\u2019. All you get is this information that says \u2018High incidence of leukaemia, high incidence of deafness\u2019 \u2026 It\u2019s totally overwhelming and unhelpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Phillips with her son, Olly.<\/p><\/div>\n

Doctors constantly told her things Olly wouldn’t be able to do\u2014all of which turned out to be wrong. \u201cI was told he would never ride a bike. He goes for a bike ride every day,” she said. “I was told he would never be able to climb anything. Then we started having this problem where he would scale the back fence of the garden because he wanted to make friends with the neighbour\u2019s children. None of the rest of us could scale that fence. The thing is, nobody knows what Down\u2019s syndrome children can achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t until NIPT, or non-invasive prenatal testing, began to be readily available around the world, including through the NHS in the United Kingdom, that Phillips began thinking of herself as an advocate. Despite Phillips’ support of legal abortion, she struggled with the idea of a child being aborted solely because of Down syndrome. \u201cI get asked, \u2018Did you know?\u2019” she said. “But what I hate is that I also get asked, \u2018Didn\u2019t you know?\u2019 And that\u2019s what worries me.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Her husband left after a Down syndrome diagnosis, but she chose life anyway<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

She continued:<\/p>\n

In a system where everybody screens and where you know at 10 or 12 weeks with 99% certainty whether your unborn baby has Down\u2019s syndrome, it becomes \u2018your fault\u2019 if you choose to have the baby. We have imperceptibly flipped into a situation where the woman is under societal pressure to have that termination. Where does it lead? <\/em><\/p>\n

If you choose to have that child, should the government help you? After all, it was your choice. Why should anyone else help you? We are really close to that attitude already. There is already a new kind of pernicious discrimination towards disabled people, the idea that they are scroungers. “Why should you steal my taxes?” Who, then, would want to have that child?<\/em><\/p>\n