On Tuesday, 25 June, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) made its closing speech in the case AK vs. Latvia, the epilogue to a legal battle fought since 2012. Basically, the Court sided with Latvia versus the applicant – the mother of a Down syndrome child who filed the case against her country because she did not have access to “screening that would have highlighted the risk of a genetic anomaly in the fœtus and would have allowed the woman to decide whether or not to continue her pregnancy”.   

The case motivated around thirty European associations linked to Down syndrome. Under the banner of “Stop Eugenics Now  to protect disabled people / Stopper l’eugénisme maintenant pour protéger les personnes handicapées !”, a petition, supported primarily in France by the Fondation Jérôme Lejeune, received over 10,000 signatures.