Late last year, Heidi Crowter, a 27-year-old woman with Down syndrome, lost her court of appeal challenge over late-term abortions on grounds of serious foetal abnormalities. Abnormalities such as hers, that is.

The law in England, Wales and Scotland makes an exception to the 24-week time limit for abortion, permitting abortion all the way up to birth if there is ‘a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped’.