“You try for the perfect human… you get the ultimate inhumanity”
The implications of this are horrifying…
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/morrow/article/0,9565,167664,00.html
(post edited to fix link)
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 07-18-2001 at 01:59 PM]
ooops!
I wonder what happened there? i didn’t want to post the article and clog the SDMB servers; Can soeone help fix this?
here is the link it’s about a law allowing a child born with disabilities to sue if their parents were not given information re: aborting.
Vestal Blue, don’t count on the automatic URL parsing for links that include special characters such as the comma. Instead, explicitly put in the [url] and [/url] vB tags.
On Suing If Your Parents Were Not Given the Chance to Abort You
It is a disturbing decision.
I don’t know if the columnist had all of the facts straight. But, it sounds like Doctors are going to be forced to advise abortions in cases were there is any chance of disability.
This is wrong and illadvised.
Yikes. I need more time to think about this. I just wanted to post a clickable link.
pat
Thanks for helping with the link, folks. I don’t do it that often.
It is disturbing, isn’t it?
I don’t see the law being described very well. It seems to me that there is a law in France that allows parents to sue a doctor for malpractice if the doctor fails to inform them of birth defects that could be detected through pre-natal exams. Is that right? Do you have another link that explains the relevant Frech legislation?
I won’t be so quick to yell “Nazis!” until I have more details.
pricciar, where do you see that? What I see is parents suing a doctor who failed to warn them of their child’s birth defects, not a law forcing abortions.
actually, this is a subject that I’ve thought about. (and may I take the time to point out 'neener neener neener, I was first to fix the link? 
)
I was the 3rd child born to my parents. Their first child died of Cystic Fibrosis roughly 6 months before I was born (so mom knew she was pregnant with me at the time). I’ve wondered what she would have done, had she been given the option of abortion (and this, of course, would have been knowing that there was a chance of me having the disease).
Regarding suing in effect saying ‘I shouldn’t have been born’? well, I don’t know that I’d go that far, and I don’t suscribe to the concept that some one who has a disability is ‘less’ than a person who doesn’t, but, I can sympathize with the concept of ‘would I want to give birth to a child, knowing that they will have a higher level of difficulties dealing with the world’.
One of the many decisions that I’m glad I didn’t have to make.
I see the potential for some doctors to advise abortion on the flimsiest of medical evidence in order to avoid lawsuits.
I think the journalists’ slant was that this is a step on a very ugly slope leading to eugenics.
wring - according to Lance Morrow’s (not very clear) description of the incident, it is not a child suing the parents or the doctor; it is the parents suing the doctor for not being made aware of the child’s birth defects.
Vestal Blue - I think it’s a doctor’s duty to let the parents know of any health problems that they can detect, and up to the parents to make a decision. How many doctors recommend abortions? In my limited experience (having discussed the issue once with a group of pro-choice doctors), it seems that doctors actually present parents with a series of options and let the parents make up their mind.
I sit corrected yet again. Sorry (had closed the link and then tried to remember what it was about). And, we apparently tied for fixing the link ( you did in the post), so I can’t even claim my ‘neener neener’. damn. 0 for 2.
Arnold, I agree with you 100%; a doctor should present allthe options. Perhaps if the parents elect to keep the fetus after having been warned, it could be documented and thereby preclude a future suit.
Without clarification beyond the article, I can only stand my ground and reiterate my concerns.
You must admit those concerns are not out of line, when living in a lawsuit-happy nation.
The article seems a rather alarmist response to something like what we in the U.S. have had for some time. There is a cause of action called “wrongful birth” in which a child, through its parent, can sue a doctor for the circumstances which allowed it to be conceived and born. Usually, these kinds of lawsuits are brought when doctors perform sterilization procedures inadequately. Also, they are usually brought when the child that is born has serious special needs.
It does seem strange that a court would allow a child to argue that it never should have been born. It also does seem to validate the choice of abortion when a fetus has a serious disease or birth defect. However, reading the article carefully, it seems that the decision was designed to award damages to these children based on the fact that the doctors negligently or recklessly failed to detect and warn their mothers of their problems. This seems to me to be a reasonable ground for damages. The tricky part is that because the doctor didn’t cause the damage, to be liable he or she must have prevented “fixing” or preventing that damage by abortion or other means.
Here’s a CNN article about the case.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/france/11/17/paris.abortion/index.html
It’s from November 2000, which is when the decision was handed down. I wonder why Morrow waited until now to comment.