Paralympic gold medallist Ellie Simmonds is trying to decide whether she should adopt, like her parents, or have children of her own. It’s all academic at this stage because the 30-year-old is currently single, but it’s been on her mind.
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.
Without a partner, she doesn’t yet know if her potential children would be born with or without achondroplasia, the condition that led to her own dwarfism.
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)One question she will have to answer is whether or not to genetically screen future embryos and whether that would, effectively, be helping to eradicate dwarfism. That leads to an even bigger question: do we want to live in a world without dwarfism? She’s not sure.
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.
For example, Simmonds meets one couple expecting a daughter with Down’s syndrome who are unfazed by the diagnosis. Cue the sad music. Another couple have made the agonising decision to end their second pregnancy when it was discovered their baby’s DiGeorge syndrome had caused terrible complications with the formation of his heart. More doleful vocals over rueful strings.
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.
square TELEVISION Ellie Simmonds: 'Dwarfism doesn't need to be cured'
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“I don’t like the idea that kids are being rejected, just because they have a disability,” she says. In her narration she adds that almost 90 per cent of UK parents given a Down’s diagnosis opt for abortion. She doesn’t mention what the stats are for achondroplasia, which seems strange, given this is the documentary’s focus.
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.
While Simmonds’s natural composure in front of the camera assures her a bright future on television, this documentary seemed to play more on the perceived tragedy of having a child with a disability. Or, at least, it was coded this way by the intrusive sorrow of the soundtrack.
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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