I truly, truly hate this man. He's a brilliant biologist but the moment he starts talking about anything else, I feel like throttling him. Some of the stuff he says is just so disgusting, unfair and above all, ignorant. He is saying that the lives of people with Down's Syndrome are worth less than the lives of 'normal' people. If you ask anyone with Down's Syndrome whether they would rather be alive or have been aborted to be replaced by an 'ordinary' child, I can guarantee that they'd rather be alive. People with Down's are perfectly happy human beings than can function in society. Parents will legitimise their actions by pretending that they're being merciful, but this is just a lie. This isn't a disease that will give the child unbearable chronic pain or some other terrible condition that will give them an awfully low quality of life. People with Down's are happy - different, but happy. If you abort your child because they've got Down's (or indeed anything else), you're not 'removing' an illness from your child, you are killing a potential human. You are making a verdict that you do not think the life of a human with Down's is worth existing.
And it's the start of a dangerous, slippery slope. If it's acceptable to abort a child because they have Down's, what's next? How soon will it be until it's acceptable to abort a child because they are likely to be autistic? When will it become acceptable for a parent to select the genetic traits of their children?