Death Before Deformity

In their search for the perfect baby, more and more parents are choosing to terminate what they know – or even just suspect – is a ‘faulty’ foetus.
Roy Eccleston reports on the latest pregnancy tests presenting new dilemmas for the modern parent.
AT THE GATEWAY TO THE HOLIDAY community of Bribie Island, north of Brisbane, locals have erected a giant billboard, bursting with the joyful summer colours of local artist Dale Marsh’s impressionist palette.

In it two teenage girls leap down from the dunes to the beach and there, at the bottom right-hand corner, a small boy stands, feet apart, eyes on the sand. Maybe he’s just jumped down himself; or perhaps a scuttling crab has caught his eye.
But Marsh’s carefree image of the youngster, captured forever in an endless summer day, is a long way from the way many would see him. Four-year old Timothy Gould has the chromosomal disorder Down syndrome.

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