ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how Down's syndrome has become the main target of prenatal screening. A range of social, technological, scientific, legal, economic, political, and cultural developments have stimulated new research and clinical tools around Down's syndrome and detecting the condition in prenatal care, from the contested to the mundane. The chapter provides insights offered by historians, healthcare professionals, anthropologists, and parents of children with Down's syndrome. Working at the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots, Down was the first person to comprehensively describe a group of people sharing anatomical and behavioural characteristics, a group that he defined as 'mongoloids' given that their facial features were seen as similar to people of Mongolian descent. By the early twentieth century, mongolism became the most commonly recognised learning disability, and many people with the syndrome lived their short lives in congested institutions. The rise of eugenics and the institutionalisation of people with mongolism coincided with great strides being made in medical genetics.
