Docs show prejudice against babies w/Down

In this press release, Children's Hospital Boston reports the results of a survey showing that mothers of babies with Down Syndrome are distressed by the prejudice their obstetricians show toward their infants.

The survey asked mothers about their experiences with physicians telling them of their child's diagnosis. From the press release:

Mothers were frequently advised to put up their child for adoption, or chided for not having prenatal testing, the survey found. Some mothers received the news too soon, such as while having episiotomies stitched up. While the worst reported instances came from the 1980s and earlier, and physicians improved over time, mothers still described insensitive comments as recently as the late 1990s and early 2000s. A mother in 1997, for example, heard a doctor refer to her newborn as an "FLK" ("funny-looking kid"); another who gave birth in 2000 reported, "The doctor flat out told my husband that this could have been prevented or discontinued at an earlier stage of the pregnancy."

"Doctors have gotten better over time, but it's been a very slow change, and they've really gone from terrible to just bad," says Skotko, who has a 24-year-old sister with Down syndrome and co-authored the award-winning book, Common Threads: Celebrating Life with Down Syndrome (Band of Angels Press). "Finding out a diagnosis of Down syndrome does not have to be a horrible process. In fact, the mothers in this study explain how physicians can make it a positive experience. We hope this paper will be a catalyst for increased dialogue among doctors."