Wrongful Birth Bill passes in Arizona

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by AXOmom

^^^Ha! Beat you to it! .

MysticCat - The print version of this article was either more thorough, or I couldn't get the entire online version to come up - not sure which, but in the print version, the parents did say, they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known. I have ethical issues with that since I am, like ThetaPrincess24, pro-life, but since she is alive and well, and the lab apparently did make a mistake, I do understand that regardless of my personal feelings on it, it is legal and in this case because of a lab screw up they didn't have the information they needed to make a decision and now her medical costs need to be covered - so I'm a little torn on how this should have been resolved.

I have a legal question for you - In medical malpractice does the law normally differentiate between understandable mistakes - i.e. the idea that no doctor, nurse or lab is going to be 100% correct, sloppy mistakes that should not be made, and reprehensible mistakes where it was obvious something bad would happen (i.e. doctor operating while intoxicated)- a negligent homicide situation. In this case it seems like this lawsuit was the first situation - the lab isn't going to be 100% correct all the time. In that case, it's hard for me to see how they won this suit other than the jury felt sorry for their situation (which I would as well, but we aren't supposed to make legal decisions that way). Am I missing something?

I don't think this case takes away from your point - that these suits aren't usually attempted or won - at all. I can see that. I don't think they would have won this suit in most places, but we aren't most places. I am reminded of that daily. We still don't think people can pump their own gas- so just because they won in Oregon - means nothing in 49 other states.

Um...that's clearly malpractice. If you have a chromosomal test for Down Syndrome that is negative, and you have a child with Down Syndrome, some one made a major mistake. That's not a little whoops. That's a gotta get it right 100% of the time kinda test.