How ‘Money-Back Guarantees’ Are Blotting Out the Vocation of Parenthood
(Zenit.org) Imagine gazing at your child and coldly declaring, “You should never have been born.” Yet parents are doing exactly that in courts around the world as they bring “wrongful life” or “wrongful birth” lawsuits against doctors and fertility clinics.
These very sad cases are variations on the classic “wrongful death” medical malpractice suit. The twist is that the plaintiffs are dissatisfied because the patient — in this case a child — lived instead of died. Usually these children suffer from a serious disability or genetic disease. In a “wrongful birth” suit the parents allege that if they had been given a prenatal diagnosis of the child’s condition they would have aborted their child. They seek compensation for the care of their child and punitive damages for having to live with a disabled child.
“Wrongful life” cases are filed on behalf of the child, claiming that non-existence is preferable to living in a diseased state. In 1998, Amos Shapira argued in the Journal of Medical Ethics: ”… it would be both feasible and desirable to endorse ‘wrongful life’ compensation actions. The genetic counsellor owed a duty of due professional care to the impaired newborn who now claims that but for the counsellor’s negligence, he or she would not have been born at all. The plaintiff’s defective life (where healthy life was never an option) constitutes a compensable injury.”
