Ms Liz McDermott:

The language around children who have something wrong with them - language such as fatal foetal abnormality - cannot but dehumanise the baby and is disrespectful. It is also disrespectful to the parents of that baby because he or she is their baby. When I read about the 50 years during which the Abortion Act has been in place in the UK, I discovered that somebody wrote that the kind of language used in the House of Lords debates involved described disabled people as mongols, spastics and monstrous. Terms like "fatal foetal abnormality", anomaly or "incompatible with life" seem to be a slightly more subtle way of describing those children. As it is the 21st-century version of that dehumanising language, that should not be allowed in any case. We have to call things by what they are and according to their nature. Terms like "baby with a lot of health problems", "baby who is not going to live for very long" or "poor survival" constitute the proper language that respects the mother of that child who is hearing it because it is hurtful. She is already stressed enough dealing with her pregnancy and its challenges. She does not need other people to hear her baby being described in a belittling and dehumanising way.