At a meeting earlier this month, Tunisian committee member Yadh Ben Achour argued:

If you tell a woman, “Your child has [Down syndrome],” or that he may have a handicap forever, for the rest of his life, you should make this woman—it should be possible for her to resort to abortion to avoid the handicap as a preventive measure.

Achour claims he’s an “ardent defender of the handicapped,” and that governments must “ensure they have a life, a possible living,” he stopped short of saying that would include a prohibition against abortion in such cases. Instead, he argued:

But that does not mean that we have to accept to let a disabled fetus live. This is a preventive measure. That doesn’t mean that we are against the disabled or that we won’t help the disabled when born disabled.

The distinction Achour is trying to make is that making a prenatal Down Syndrome diagnosis means the disabled baby no longer has the same intrinsic human rights as he or she would after birth. After birth, the state is obligated to do everything it can to protect his or her life.

Or, as he put it, the world must do everything it can to “avoid” handicaps like Down Syndrome, adding that there is no contradiction in those positions.