In the opening scenes of Disability and Abortion: The Hardest Choice (Channel 4) we are getting to know our hosts, the actors Ruth Madeley and Ruben Reuter. Reuter, who has Down’s syndrome, is loved up with his girlfriend and enjoying his own flat. Madeley, who has spina bifida, goes for cocktails with the girls and has a Bafta nomination. The purpose is clear: any viewer who believes that the lives of disabled people are not worth living should re-evaluate their prejudice. It is an important, albeit simplified, point and in many ways sums up the challenge ahead for the film-makers: boiling a highly complex ethical debate into a one-hour mainstream vehicle.
Madeley and Reuter start the documentary with an understandable but crude idea: that the UK’s abortion law, which permits termination of a pregnancy with foetal abnormalities after the standard term limit of 24 weeks, amounts to “discrimination” against disabled babies. The hosts plan to meet various people – parents, doctors, charity workers – to challenge their ideas.
