Monday, April 25, 2005
Wrongful life
A mother who gave birth to a twin girl after an abortion failed is suing the hospital for £250,000 to help bring up her daughter.
This is an English case, based on English law. Were such a case brought in the United States (perhaps one has been -- I am no expert on this subject), it would strike at the heart of the American rationale for legal abortion. Those who claim that the right to an abortion derives from a woman's right to control her own reproduction would have a hard time defending the theory that damages should compensate the mother for the costs of rearing the child. After all, if the reason to permit abortion is so that a woman may choose not to be burdened with carrying a fetus to term, then the right to an abortion is really the right to separation from the fetus, not termination of the fetus. The damages in the case of a failed abortion should therefore be some measure of the burden of pregnancy and childbirth, not the cost of raising the child after birth.
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