January 30, 2003
"DISRUPTED OUR PLANS"?:
Mother wins damage claim over lack of test for Down syndrome (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, January 30, 2003)A woman who said she would have had an abortion had she known her daughter would be born with Down syndrome has been awarded $10,000 (U.S.$6,500).Dr. Ken Kan of suburban Richmond was negligent in failing to send Liu-Ling "Lydia" Zhang for an expedited amniocentesis, a procedure that likely would have detected the chromosome defect that causes the condition, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Michael Catliff ruled this week.
Zhang, 42, a business operator with homes in Vancouver and Hong Kong, testified during a 15-day trial last November that she was devastated after her daughter Sherry was born on April 29, 1997.
Zhang said her husband, Simon Fung, could not accept that she had given birth to a retarded child and having Sherry "totally disrupted our plans."
These people are just despicable. Even if you can understand prefering the abortion to the child--and there is a coherent, though not necessarily compelling, case to be made--what kind of person would pursue a suit like this and say these things once their daughter is born? Is $6000 worth telling your child you wish she were dead? Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2003 11:35 PM
Flipping channels earlier, I actually saw a report on the CBS news in which the reporter stated that premature birth is way up in this country, noting that "unfortunately" (I'm quoting that part, paraphrasing the rest), medical technology is keeping more of these infants alive, which can lead to health problems down the road. They even showed a mother complaining about the fact that her young son, who was born prematurely, now must wear glasses and suffers from a learning disability.
My jaw just dropped. Did they really mean to imply that the lives of these children are essentially worthless? Because that's how it came out.
Of course, Dan Rather just went right on reading the news after this clip ran -- didn't even bat an eye. And I quickly turned back to Fox News. :)
And this species, I suppose, should be afforded a blank check in designing its own young, as the Brave New Worlders would like . . .
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 31, 2003 12:46 AMIn Turpin v. Sortini, in approximately 1982, the California Supreme Court upheld the legal viability of a cause of action for "wrongful life." The Court allowed the recovery of "special damages" related to the disability of the child, who would otherwise have been aborted, but refused to allow "general damages" on the grounds that valuing non-existence against existence was inherently speculative. I know one of the attorneys who argued the Turpin case and I spoke to him last week about a recent Utah case precluding "wrongful life" suite sin that case. It doesn't appear that in the United States this cause of action has really gone anywhere since the '80's.
Posted by: Peter Sean Bradley at January 31, 2003 2:21 AMEven the French had the sense to throw out a wrongful birth suit on comperable grounds.
Posted by: Mark Byron at January 31, 2003 12:24 PMShoot, she could still kill the kid now, couldn't she? What's the difference?
Posted by: Harry at January 31, 2003 2:51 PMHarry:
That's next.