Ellie Simmonds: Should I Have Children? evaluation – fails to correctly take on the stigma round disabled young children

For the makers of Ellie Simmonds’ new documentary, Should I Have Children?, probably the most robust second of the display is obviously intended to be when she unearths out why she used to be given up for adoption. It is emotional viewing: her delivery mom speaks of her tricky cases (she had saved her being pregnant secret), the purely detrimental data she were given about Ellie’s dwarfism, and, maximum poignantly, how she considered Ellie on a daily basis within the a long time ahead of they met once more. It is deeply shifting, for Ellie and the viewer.

For me, regardless that, probably the most robust second is altogether much less charged. It comes when Ellie visits David and Megan, whose being pregnant she follows after they’re advised their child nearly indisputably has Down’s syndrome. We watch them grapple with the ramifications of the analysis together with their fears for the kid’s long run and the verdict about whether or not to terminate the being pregnant (90% of pregnancies involving a analysis of Down’s syndrome are actually terminated). David talks movingly of suffering with the speculation of his kid being bullied. Yet when Ellie visits them at house, the whole thing has modified: the child is there, and the couple are obviously smitten. “All the worry completely evaporates the minute you see her for the first time,” David says, in an abnormal expression of fatherly love that also is an impressive commentary about how the truth of incapacity is so steadily got rid of from the worry it provokes.

While the documentary asks numerous necessary questions, I want it took a little bit extra time to inspect the place that concern comes from, and what sort of it performs into other folks’s choices to terminate a being pregnant or give a kid up for adoption. It’s there in short in David’s remark about bullying, and in any other he makes about being worried over who will take care of their kid after they now not can, however it’s no longer probed extra deeply. The center of attention is at the clinical, at the particular person selection folks make about whether or not they may be able to take care of a disabled kid, however no longer at the query of whether or not, in a global that steadily supplies little assist to those folks and repeatedly devalues the lifestyles in their kid, this is even a unfastened selection in any respect. Ellie does point out the position stigma performs however the documentary would were more potent and had a larger impact on public attitudes if it had addressed this wider, social measurement.

There are different necessary questions that don’t get consideration, no longer least the legislation that implies that, in the United Kingdom, abortion is normally allowed up till 24 weeks of being pregnant, however is prison up till time period if there’s a important chance of foetal “abnormality”. Whether those regulations are proper or no longer can by no means be absolutely responded in a one-hour documentary (or possibly ever), however it does really feel like an oversight to not even point out the disparity – or the way it feeds into the problems that are addressed within the movie.

Ellie’s personal, non-public dilemmas also are no longer absolutely addressed. We see her know about her probabilities of passing on her dwarfism to any youngsters she can have, however, once more, the dialog is totally clinical. The moral issues are left unstated, possibly permitting audiences to conclude that passing on a genetic situation is at all times unhealthy – even supposing that isn’t essentially true, and it’s no longer transparent Ellie believes it’s (she worries that genetic trying out will imply no young children with dwarfism shall be born to oldsters with the situation). There is not any statement of disabled other folks’s human proper to a circle of relatives lifestyles, or point out of the way steadily disabled other folks’s reproductive rights are systematically abused (in lots of portions of the sector, together with the USA, disabled other folks can nonetheless be sterilised with out their consent). There could also be no dialogue of the prejudices disabled folks, particularly the ones with genetic stipulations, face or the loss of services and products to beef up them; either one of those issues really feel an important if the central query – will have to Ellie have youngsters? – is to be correctly addressed. Once once more, the social facets of this choice appear to be overpassed.

The documentary is thought-provoking, and Ellie’s authentic compassion for everybody she meets makes it a compelling and profitable watch. There is simplest such a lot she will duvet in an hour and audiences will nonetheless be told a huge quantity. As she says, the general public wouldn’t have to believe most of these problems when they’ve a kid, and it could simplest be a excellent factor to get the general public to take into consideration them too, particularly within the judgment-free method Ellie approaches her paintings. But we should understand that for the entire clinical data, the choices other folks make about having a disabled kid or being a disabled guardian are formed by way of concern and stigma. We wish to discuss that a complete lot extra.