A woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy is non-negotiable. Even if Phillips – someone I’ve long-admired – doesn’t like their reasons
I’ve always been a fan of Sally Phillips. I loved her as the chain-smoking feminist Shazza in Bridget Jones, of course, as well as the nightmare girlfriend from the past in Green Wing. But mainly I loved her for the 90s feminist sketch show Smack the Pony. Some women experience their feminist awakening when they read The Female Eunuch or Andrea Dworkin. For me, it came from Nora Ephron and Smack the Pony, in which Phillips, along with Fiona Allen and Doon Mackichan, gloriously satirised the rigid expectations placed on women, often by other women.
Which brings me to Phillips’ documentary, A World Without Down’s Syndrome?, which screened on Wednesday night on BBC2. There has been an enormous amount of publicity for this documentary, with praise for Phillips’ clearly heartfelt intentions. The actor has an adorable young son, Olly, who has Down’s, and one of her aims is to provide a counterbalance to the almost entirely negative depiction of Down’s in both society and the media. For this, she should be loudly applauded. True, her wholly positive depiction of her life with a child with Down’s is as partial as the wholly negative ones, not least because her son is relatively high-functioning and Phillips and her husband are able to afford help. Still, as I said, it’s a much-needed corrective, and hats off to her.
To argue for screening is not to argue, as Phillips suggests, that people with Down’s don’t have a right to life
Related: Sally Phillips: Do we really want a world without Down’s syndrome?
Related: Sally Phillips’s film on Down’s is ‘unhelpful’ for families, warns antenatal specialist
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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2dxKZmO
