English and Welsh women are eight times more likely to abort a baby with Down syndrome than Irish women

By Dr. Peter Saunders from National Right to Life News Today:
Editor’s note. Dr. Saunders is a former general surgeon and is CEO of Christian Medical Fellowship, a UK-based organization with 4,500 UK doctors and 1,000 medical students as members.
If you have Down’s syndrome and your mother lives in Ireland then your chances of making it to birth are considerably greater than if you have the misfortune to be conceived in England or Wales.
English and Welsh women are 7.6 times more likely than Irish women to have an abortion for a baby with Down’s Syndrome, 6 times more likely to have an abortion for Edward’s syndrome and 4 times more likely to have one for Patau’s syndrome.
Furthermore the Irish birth rate for Down’s syndrome babies is about twice that for England and Wales.
The way these figures are derived is explained below. The calculations are not simple as many babies with all these conditions are not diagnosed until after birth.
Some of the most common congenital abnormalities accounting for abortions in England and Wales are ‘trisomies’, in which there are three copies of one particular chromosome rather than two.
The most common trisomies are Down’s syndrome (trisomy 21), Edwards’ syndrome (18) and Patau syndrome (13). People with DS now have an average life expectancy of between 50 and 60 but those with Edwards’ syndrome (ES) and Patau syndrome (PS) will all die in early childhood.
The National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register (NDSCR) was set up on January 1, 1989 and holds anonymous data from all clinical cytogenetic laboratories in England and Wales of cases of DS, ES and PS diagnosed before or after birth.