▸ Example 1: ‘I had my trust in my husband as well … But I never knew how ignorant he was about all those things. He said he's AA [not a carrier] — that he's OK. I think it's kind of believed to be AA is like when you're not weak, when you're not tired, you're not anaemic, you know, you're active, so that, I mean, you're a big man with big broad shoulders, with big bones, you know — you can do things that the women cannot do. So I think that, in his books, means, not being sickle, not having the sickle trait. But then he has it [the trait]. (Woman of Nigerian origin who is a sickle cell carrier and has a child with sickle cell anaemia.)

▸ Example 2: ‘I knew sickle cell being mainly in the black community. And I don't know, he could have thought that I'd been dishonest …You do look at the baby and you know that she is both of ours. But no, there could have been, if he wasn't as understanding, if he wasn't as good a man as what he is, then I dread to think … I could have been black and blue by now and out that door with a newborn baby, nowhere to go. (White British mother with white partner, baby identified as sickle cell carrier through newborn screening. Mother also a carrier.)

▸ Example 3: ‘To me it means that I've got a four-lane carriageway, I've got a child and I put him in one of them, and I know that in one of those a car will come fast … This is 25% to me.’ (White Italian couple, got married knowing they were both thalassaemia carriers, have tried preimplantation genetic diagnosis so far without success.)