Following her 2023 Bafta-winning documentary, Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family, in which she met the birth mother who gave her up for adoption, Ellie Simmonds: Should I Have Children? sees the former swimmer dive back into the complicated world of birth and disability.
Like most women just out of their twenties, she hasn’t given the subject serious thought until now and what she’s told proves a lot to take in. If her partner has dwarfism, there’s a 25 per cent probability that their baby would inherit a double dose of a gene that would be likely to prevent the baby from making it to term. But her adoptive father worries that she’ll regret not having children of her own.
Simmonds met with parents who understood her dilemma (Photo: Voltage TV/ITV)The ethics around screening for disability are touched upon here, rather than deeply investigated, and while there’s a decent balance in the narrative content, the music cues throughout lean heavily on a wistful gloom, as if to emphasise how difficult and sad all of this is. The intention is pathos but the overall effect is mawkish and detracts from Simmonds’s very honest, nuanced reactions to what she and we are learning.
This anecdotal balance is well supported by experts in foetal medicine and genetics, offering the pros and cons of screening. But it’s Simmonds’ genuine reactions that speak the loudest.
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The call Simmonds makes to her birth mother is the most moving part of the film. As she steels herself to ask why she was given up 30 years ago, Simmonds is pensive and visibly uncomfortable. “All I could see was your disability,” says her birth mum, candidly. It’s a disarming admission that floors Simmonds. She cries quietly as she listens to her mother admit her shame and feelings of cowardice. Simmonds tells her there’s no blame; her compassion is total.
After her investigations, we return to the former athlete as she arranges tulips in her sunny kitchen. A thought occurs: “I think what people think of as fear of the disability is actually the fear of what’s inside of them.” And with that, no more words are needed.
‘Ellie Simmonds: Should I Have Children?’ is streaming on ITVX
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