Woman sues doctors after failed abortion
 

Woman sues doctors after failed abortion

BOSTON - A Boston woman who gave birth after a failed abortion has filed a lawsuit against two doctors and Planned Parenthood seeking the costs of raising her child.

The state's high court ruled in 1990 that parents can sue physicians for child-rearing expenses, but limited those claims to cases in which children require extraordinary expenses because of medical problems, medical malpractice lawyer Andrew C. Meyer Jr. said.

WOW. just, wow!

I feel bad for that child...the kid is going to find out eventually that not only was she unplanned, but that her mom tried to abort her. Geez, kids gonna need years of pyschotherapy.

The lawsuit makes sense to me.

Can women sue birth control companies for failed contraception?

Can they? I don't know. Makers of BC even state in their commercials that it's 99% effective - someone's always gonna represent that 1%.

well, yes most civil attorney's...attornies?...go by the rule: sue anyone you can for anything you can, one day you'll get lucky and be able to retire

This is strange, but why doesn't she just put him into adoptive services.

And I do believe the docotors are at fault and that the plantiff is entitled to monetarry compinsation, whether those funds are to be used in rearing the child or otherwise.

I doubt it because I doubt you would be able to prove that you took it "as directed", on time, everyday, and therefore they would be able to argue that it was your fault. (Plus they do state that it's 99% effective, as someone mentioned.)

Wrongful life!
 

It makes sense to me, too, although I wonder if the doctors will allege that she failed to mitigate damages by giving the kid up for adoption.

Wow. Just wow.

She is entitled to a refund for the abortion.

What if instead of a botched abortion, this was a case where the doctor, say, amputated the wrong leg during surgery. Would the patient be entitled only to a refund of the cost of the surgery, or would there be additional damages based on the loss of the leg?

Oh. I just realized there are 2 different threads that I've been posting in.

That has happened before.

I believe the person won a ton of money because he still had to get the correct leg amputated. He's now a parapalegic(sp).

Shaheen v. Knight comes to mind.

On another note, this lawsuit really disgusts me.

I don't see how that's analogous to this case. The woman got herself pregnant, a "mistake" she made herself and wanted "fixed", in her eyes. The doctors failed to fix it for her. They didn't cause her any damage. Just as she was free to choose to abort, after the child was born she was free to choose placing the child with one of hundreds of families on waiting lists to adopt. Instead, she chose to raise her. Now she wants those who failed to fix her problem to be responsible for its existence and entire future? (For the record, I don't personally consider children to be problems).

Hence, why the lawsuit makes sense and why valkyrie's analogy loosely applies.

Dude, you sound like my torts professor.

I feel a little better about this now that I think about it. She is going to be suing an abortion doctor, after all. I really could care less what happens to him/her in this. Its too bad any judgment will be paid via malpractice insurance.

Wouldn't a more appropriate analogy be a doctor surgically attaching an extra leg, as opposed to the amputation comparison? Instead of missing something that she can't replace, she gained something that she's elected to keep.

If she were suing for damages related to pain and suffering in terms of the pregnancy and birth, I could sort of see it. But no one is making her keep the kid that she intended to abort. To me that seem like an elected decision very unlike the amputation example.

It's just so weird: how could she and doctors that she visited not know she was 20 weeks pregnant?

If we're critiquing analogies, yours doesn't work simply because it doesn't make sense. Is attaching this extra leg an accident or was it intentional? Why is the person choosing to keep this 3rd leg instead of removing it?

Let's say she opts for adoption. Could she sue for emotional damage that having a child that won't know her can cause?

Oh, I know it doesn't make sense, but neither does giving birth to a child equate with amputating the wrong limb.

Although she was the victim of a botched medical procedure and a separate error in telling her she wasn't pregnant, she is now choosing to keep the child. An amputee cannot choose a course of action post surgery that basically allows him or her to return to the pre-surgery status.* She could have had she had the child and given it up.

*I think she is entitled to some compensation for the malpractice. I think that there were damages in having to carry the child she didn't want and give birth. But I don't think that the doctors should be responsible for the living expenses of the kid, seeing that she could avoid that obligation herself if she choose to give the child up.

It's kind hard for me to imagine why giving up the child for adoption would be psychologically more damaging than having aborted, especially more damaging in a way that would mean that she was entitled to ongoing compensation.

I disagree. Her analogy was about creating an additional problem. Furthermore I don't buy the comparison of gangrene or any other unfortunate condition to pregnancy, something a middle-aged American woman has had the means and knowledge to prevent for most of her life.

If she were suing for prenatal care and delivery costs, that'd be one thing. Maybe emotional distress. But in general you don't get compensated for the choices you make in life.

:(
 

How do you not perform an aportion correctly? Is the child damaged? How sad this all is...

HAHA that is the best thing anybody has ever said to me!

I know my analogy isn't exactly the same thing, but it's a bummer that people on this thread can't get past the emotional "OMG A BABY ISN'T A BAD THING" because for some people, it is and for some people, having an unwanted baby probably sucks just as much as having a leg amputated by accident (having never had a baby or an amputation, I can't speak from experience, but I'd be pretty upset to have either). In both cases, a doctor made a mistake and someone suffered unwanted consequences as a result. Why shouldn't some of the costs be transferred to the doctors? (I avoided the word "responsible" because my torts professor totally yelled at anybody who ever used that word.)

I can look at it both ways. As a law student it seems like she should have a claim. As a human being I feel entirely different.

Who said this?

There are ways to "get rid of" :( a baby - there's no way to get your leg back.

Her having to carry and give birth to a baby she didn't want probably was/seems to her a bad thing that she could/should be compensated for, but no one is insisting that she herself assume the cost of raising the kid. She is choosing to do that. She could easily transfer that cost to someone else through adoption.

(There's a big part of my that's with Shinerbock on this one. Go ahead, sue ALL the Planned Parenthood abortionists. Great plan.)

Well, and something else worth noting about the doctors' responsibility is that they didn't actually get her pregnant. She's got some baby's daddy out there that she can compel to pay child support.

Haha, my civ pro professor gets the same way when people use the word "guilty."

I think I'm agreeing with shinerbock on this; I mean, I'm pro-choice (although I have conflicting feelings on abortion, I don't think it's anyone's right to control someone's body), and as a law student I understand the rationale for damages (at least as well as a 1L can understand it), but this case still strikes me the wrong way. Of course, if things were decided on whether they struck someone "the wrong way," we'd have a messed up legal system.

I see where the woman would be entitled to some damages, but I wouldn't equate it to amputating the wrong leg, if only because you have all sorts of other health/morbidity concerns with that.

I honestly don't know what I would equate it with, only because I've never heard of anything like this before. I could see the mother/victim being entitled to something, I'm just not sure what that "something" would be. Have the physician or his insurance company pay for the costs associated with putting the baby up for adoption? Emotional and psychological damages? Did she suffer any lasting physical harm from the child birth?

Of course maybe it's best for her this happened in Massachusetts, where the court system doesn't mind going out on a limb.

Exactly!!

Could she sue for the emotional toll of post partum depression and/or the emotional toll of having a child in the world that she doesn't know? She didn't want a child, which is why she wanted an abortion, but having the child and sending it away is a potentially different dynamic.

People get compensated for their choices everyday.

Society just creates new rules when it comes to women's reproductive systems. Another way of controlling a group of people.

Actually, there's case law in different states that supports her claim for medical malpractice. I think she might be able to recover some of her damages if not all of them. I wonder if she's also suing for tortious assault, IIED, and gross negligence. This scenario was once used as an MBE question on the Bar.

As unspokenone says, the law of medmal differs from state to state. I think here though, the woman clearly had the ability to mitigate her damages and chose not to.

When we talk about negligence, in very simple terms, we are talking about someone who breaches a duty, is the proximate cause of the harm and somehow damages the plaintiff. If any of those elements are absent, your basic negligence claim (which is mostly what a medmal claim is) doesn't fly.

In medical malpractice, to establish the "duty" aspect, there must first be the establishment of the "standard of care." Usually, this is done with experts. The duty differs from state to state, but mostly, the standard of care consists of whatever the level of care, skill, ability, etc. that the reasonable doctor/caregiver in that locality would be (the standard of care in Hooker, OK, pop ~2,000 would differ from Dallas, TX). Before establishing that this doctor owes anything, it must somehow be shown that he didn't do something he should have reasonably done. No medical procedure comes with a 100% guarantee. Since we don't know whether the doctor breached his duty of reasonable care, to even talk about damages, I think we're jumping the gun.

Even assuming the doctor breached his standard of care, the defendant here has some pretty good defenses. Most states recognize that the defendant cannot sit idly by and watch her damages increase when the defendant could reasonably do something to stop. I can't for the life of me comprehend how the defendant could not determine that after the procedure, she was still pregnant. It seems to me that there would have been a few clues. She should have gone in and been checked out again... even failing that, as many have said here, she could have adopted out. Instead, she has decided all on her own to take the most expensive path. I'm also thinking of the "last clear chance" defense -- that defendant here had the last clear chance to avoid the injury. She chose not to, therefore, anything after her choice should be her fault.

It's interesting to me that Plaintiff's attorney has contacted the media regarding his case (I'm assuming that because we're hearing about the case now... it's not as if the media goes out and finds stories like this on its own). That's pretty questionable ethically. It seems that he may have been trying to blackmail the doctor into settling and the doctor's insurance company called his bluff. My feeling is that this case goes nowhere or is settled for nuisance value.

Long live the freedom to take life!

This isn't an abortion debate.

Don't be absurd, everything is an abortion debate. If its in front of a jury, you bet your ass it'll be an abortion debate.

That's because people are silly and women's body parts are property.

But it isn't an abortion debate.

The judge would probably be able to set aside any jury verdict based on the defenses which will be raised. Also, I'm sure the judge will keep a very tight leash on plaintiff's counsel regarding discussions of the morality of abortion.

Of course, the door swings both ways -- the defense would be able to show the jury a picture of the baby the plaintiff wanted to abort and is now simply trying to turn into a pay day by suing the good doctor who is only fulfilling a need of society. The plaintiff will be portrayed as being just as morally culpable (if that discussion even occurs), not to mention litigious and only looking for a pay day.

This is the attitude that sickens me. I'm not a person ready to overturn Roe, but the idea that the unborn are just disposable disgusts me.

Also, while I have no intention of starting an abortion debate, I'll say whatever I damn well please about it. Thanks.

Well, I don't believe others ought to get sued for the things a person does to him or herself, whether it involves reproduction or not.