DOWN SYNDROME DOES NOT KILL LOVE
PIOTR FRANKOWSKI
In 2014 European social organizations fighting for respecting rights of people with Down syndrome, prepared an advertising spot being an appeal to women who would find out that their babies would be born with this genetic defect.
First, on the screen there appears a message, full of bitterness, showing a mother’s feeling of mutiny but after a while children with characteristic face expression who are asking their parents to accept them. Their message is touching. Although the illness is visible on their faces, and are happy and do not differ from children at their age in anything, as for expressing emotions. People with this defect and their parents appearing in this film show that although bringing up a child with Down syndrome is usually difficult but it also brings a lot of joy, and people with this syndrome are able to learn normally, as well as work and function in the society. Broadcasting the film in French TV stations met with complaints addressed to the French equivalent of the National Broadcasting Council which stated that French law had been breached while advertisements should be commercial or be in the interest of the society. It turned out that the fight for dignity of people with Down syndrome does not lie in the interest of the interest of the French society. Censorship of CSA was sued to court and on 10 November this year the Council of the State expressed an opinion – the Supreme Administration Court of Justice in France. Judges not only agree with the decision of CSA about censorship of the advertising spot but also emphasized that looking at the happy people with Down syndrome ‘might have caused remorse of conscience among women who had made a different decision according to law’.
Certainly, it concerns mothers who had abortion done on their children with Down syndrome.
Readers of ‘Niedziela’ can protest against it when people with Down syndrome are deprived of the right to be in the public space. On website of Foundation Life and Family (www.syndrome.pl) there is a possibility to send a protest letter to the embassy of France by clicking a special link.
AA
„Niedziela” 49/2016