Sally Phillips' 2016 BBC Documentary: A World Without Down's Syndrome

In 2016, Actress Sally Phillips produced a BBC Documentary called A World Without Down's Syndrome, her eldest son Olly was born with Down's Syndrome. When he was born she had been made to think that it was an ungodly thing by the doctor and nurse that helped deliver him, since then Sally grew to love him and decided to make a documentary to help us as viewers to understand what Down's Syndrome is, as well as her visiting a number of different professionals in different countries to find out their opinions on Down's Syndrome and to try to stop babies with DS from being eliminated. 

Notes I took from the documentary:

1) Around half a million women go to see their babies for the first time at their 12 week scan, mothers find out when babies are due and if they're growing normal. This is also the time where the baby gets tested for Down's Syndrome. For the test they measure the baby and test the hormone levels in the blood which give a probability of whether the baby has DS.

2) In the last 10 years the number of terminations have risen by 40% which equivalates to a 9/10 termination if there is a positive outcome to the test. (These numbers are from 2016).

3) In every cell there is meant to be 23 pairs of chromosomes, people with DS have an extra copy of chromosome 21, chromosomes are pieces of information that make us who we are. All the extra chromosome might mean is that you are smaller then average, you may have a smaller mouth so your tongue may stick out, you have almond shaped eyes and you may have some level of learning disability.

4) There are only 40,000 people in the UK with Down's Syndrome.

5) In 2016, people with DS had started to achieve more than ever before, such as Liam Bairstow joining the cast of Coronation Street to play the soaps first ever DS character of Alex Warner.

6) People with Down's Syndrome were not allowed to attend school until the 1970's and they were not allowed to attend mainstream school until 1981.

7) Professor Sue Buckley globally changed the lives of people with DS and she paved the way for them by developing speech and language classes. This meant that 80% so 4/5ths of people with DS could learn to read if taught in the right way which could lead them to live ordinary lives by going to school and getting jobs.

8) There was a new development in the scientific world so instead of having Amniocentesis which could potentially harm your baby they created a new non-evasive prenatal test with a 99% accuracy rate, however, this new test caused the termination of babies with Down's Syndrome to rise by a quarter.

9) In Iceland 100% (in 2016) of the population terminated babies that were tested positive for DS in the last 5 years.

The documentary can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhmIeSxXcxE

Link to the blog mentioned in the documentary: http://www.downssideup.com/

Details about the documentary can be found at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/parenting/sally-phillips-my-son-has-downs-syndrome---but-i-wouldnt-want-to/ and https://dontscreenusout.org/sally-phillips-really-want-world-without-downs-syndrome/ and https://creation.com/down-syndrome-abortion