Life News
November 1, 2025
By Steven Ertelt
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Back in 2019, we reposted a story revealing the grim reality facing babies with Down syndrome in Denmark. That year, there were virtually none—just 18 babies born with Down syndrome.
When I read “The Last Children of Down Syndrome” by Sarah Zhang, I was immediately reminded of a 2017 story she wrote that appeared in *The Atlantic* magazine. The subhead of Zhang’s piece puts the story into a broader context:
*“Prenatal screening is changing who gets born and who doesn’t. This is just the beginning.”*
Nobody questions the legality of abortion in Denmark, Zhang writes. “Danes are quite open about abortion—astonishingly so to my American ears—but abortions for a fetal anomaly, and especially Down syndrome, are different. They still carry a stigma.”
Why this stigma exists runs as the main thread throughout this long, must-read story.
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The backdrop is that in 2004, Denmark became one of the first countries in the world to offer prenatal Down syndrome screening to every pregnant woman, regardless of age or other risk factors, Zhang explains. Nearly all expecting mothers choose to take the test; of those who receive a Down syndrome diagnosis, more than 95 percent choose to abort.
The few babies born with Down syndrome are typically due to a “misdiagnosis” or because parents are told the odds of having a baby with an extra chromosome were almost infinitesimally small.
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One question raised is why women choose abortion and how influential bleak prognostications can be. Ann Katrine, the sister of Karl Emil—an 18-year-old young man with Down syndrome who is the heart of the story—put it this way:
*“If you handed any expecting parent a whole list of everything their child could possibly encounter during their entire lifespan—illnesses and stuff like that—then anyone would be scared.”*
Their mother, Grete Fält-Hansen, added,
*“Nobody would have a baby.”*
Or, looked at another way, are women truly exercising genuine “choice” in such a cultural setting? When the expectation is that a woman carrying a baby with Down syndrome will abort, how free is that choice?
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While the language has evolved—“mongoloid” is no longer used—physicians are perhaps no less blunt about these children’s futures. Even though less emphasis is publicly placed on “saving money” by aborting than in years past, the message still rings clear: aren’t all of us, including the child, “better off” if he or she is aborted?
As Zhang writes,
*“The decisions parents make after prenatal testing are private and individual ones. But when the decisions so overwhelmingly swing one way—to abort—it does seem to reflect something more: an entire society’s judgment about the lives of people with Down syndrome. That’s what I saw reflected in Karl Emil’s face.”*
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The cultural narrative is a constant back-and-forth between the near absence of children with Down syndrome and a collective guilt that Danes, in doing so, are not living up to their own image of themselves or their culture.
*“I think it’s because we as a society like to think of ourselves as inclusive,”* said Stina Lou, a researcher.
*“We are a rich society, and we think it’s important that different types of people should be here.”*
For some women who choose abortion, their own self-understanding is shaken.
*“They have to accept they aren’t the kind of person like they thought,”* Lou said. *“They were not the type of person who would choose to have a child with a disability.”*
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One powerful thought comes from Stephanie Meredith, director of the National Center for Prenatal and Postnatal Resources at the University of Kentucky. She shared a story about her 20-year-old son seeing his sister collide painfully with another player on the basketball court. She hit the ground so hard an audible crack went through the gym.
Before Meredith could react, her son leapt from the bleachers and picked his sister up.
*“He wasn’t worried about the rules; he wasn’t worried about decorum. It was just responding and taking care of her,”* Meredith recounted.
Meredith was recently asked a simple but profound question:
*What are you most proud of about your son that isn’t an achievement or a milestone?*
The incident on the basketball court was the first to come to mind.
*“It doesn’t have to do with accomplishment,”* she said. *“It has to do with caring about another human being.”*
This question stayed with Meredith—and it stayed with me—because of how subtly yet powerfully it reframes what parents should value in their children: not grades, basketball trophies, or college acceptance letters, but empathy and caring. It opens the door to a world less obsessed with achievement.
Meredith also pointed out that Down syndrome is defined and diagnosed by a medical system made up of people who themselves must be highly successful to get there, people who likely base part of their identity on their intelligence. This is the system offering parents the tools to decide what kind of children to have. Might it be biased in judging whose lives have value?
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**Topics:** Chit/Chat
**Keywords:** abortion, Denmark, Down syndrome, prolife
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**Comments:**
1. *”Once they are able to detect who will be short or more often ill or physically not as strong, they will eventually be aborted as well. Nothing less than a superior human will be allowed to be born as they piece together how genes interact with each other.”* — Morgana
2. *”(I’ve been diagnosed as being polemic and there is no cure.)”* — Jonty30
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