California parents won a settlement in a “wrongful birth” lawsuit this month after they accused doctors of failing to provide information that would have led them to abort their daughter with Down syndrome.
NBC Los Angeles reports the couple wanted $80 million in damages for their daughter’s so-called wrongful birth. The terms of the settlement, filed earlier this month with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victor Chavez, are not known.
The Southland parents, who are not named in the report, claimed the doctors failed in their duty to recognize their daughter’s genetic disability. Their 2015 lawsuit named Axminster Medical Group Inc., Westchester Advanced Imaging Medical Group Inc. and Drs. Glenn P. Wedeen, Christopher Meilleur and Mia J. Sanders Madati as parties, according to the report.
In the court papers, the couple said they would have aborted the wife’s fetus had they known she would be born with Down Syndrome. The allege their doctors did not competently performed tests showing their daughter would be born with Down syndrome. As a result, their daughter was born in 2014 with Down syndrome associated with congenital heart disease that required surgery shortly after her birth. The couple reached a settlement with two medical groups and three physicians, court papers obtained Friday show.
Their case and others like it are a horrible injustice to their children and basic human rights. Rather than love a child for who they are, parents who file these lawsuits basically are saying they wish their child was dead.
While parents deserve to know the truth about test results and other medical issues, some have taken these cases in a dangerous direction by arguing that the misinformation prevented them from killing their child before birth.
A number of British and American families have won massive settlements after arguing that they would have aborted their babies if they had known about their disabilities before birth.
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In late 2017, a British judge awarded Omodele Meadows £9 million (about $12 million) for the “wrongful birth” of her son, Adejuwon, who has autism and a severe form of hemophilia.
In 2013, a Washington state couple also won $50 million in a lawsuit after they argued they were denied information that could have led them to abort their disabled baby, LifeNews reported. The Seattle Times reported the couple knew they had a 50-percent chance of having children with the debilitating genetic disorder unbalanced chromosome translocation, but a genetic test failed to detect the disorder in their unborn baby.
In 2014, an Illinois mother also sued her doctor, claiming that he botched her tubal ligation and it led to the birth of her daughter who has sickle cell disease.
Some states ban so-called wrongful birth lawsuits to protect both born and unborn children from discrimination.
LifeNews Note: File photo.
