A statement from the Danish ambassador to Ireland was read out last Wednesday at a meeting of the Oireachtas committee on the eighth amendment. Carsten Sondergaard informed TDs and senators that his country did not have an official policy to eliminate Down’s syndrome children while still in the womb. The ambassador was responding to a pro-life campaigner who had told the committee otherwise.
I’m sure Sondergaard is right, but what is happening in Denmark, and perhaps Ireland soon, amounts to the next best thing, as in Denmark almost all Down’s syndrome children are, in fact, killed in utero.
The official figures are stark. In 2015, there were 144 Danish women told by doctors that the baby they were carrying had Down’s syndrome. Only one of