Irish parents who aborted their healthy unborn son after they were told that he had a fatal disability won a settlement in their case against the hospital in June.
Rebecca Price and Patrick Kiely, of Dublin, said they suffered tremendously after learning that their son, Christopher Joseph Kiely, was healthy, and his abortion death was “tragic and unnecessary,” according to The Guardian.
The couple reached an undisclosed settlement agreement with the National Maternity Hospital and other parties last week, Extra Ireland reports.
The couple said they were overjoyed to find out that they were pregnant with their first child in late 2018. Early in 2019, Price said she underwent recommended prenatal testing and was told that her unborn son tested positive for trisomy 18, a severe disability that often can be fatal; a second test also showed evidence of the disorder, according to the report.
Price said she made it “absolutely clear” that they would not consider an abortion unless their baby had no chance of survival, according to Extra.
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She said they agreed to the abortion after being told that “the pregnancy was not viable and that there was no point in waiting for the results of a more comprehensive chromosomal analysis,” The Guardian reports.
Christopher was aborted in March 2019.
Afterward, the results of the comprehensive genetic testing returned, and it showed that Christopher had been healthy, his parents said.
Last week, they issued a statement saying the settlement was “the beginning of the end of a harrowing, cruel and tortuous journey.”
“Christopher was a normal, healthy baby boy,” they said. “It has taken two years, three months and nine days to get to this point. Christopher’s voice has finally been heard and vindicated arising from the full admission of liability on the part of Merrion Fetal Clinic and the NMH, Prof. Fionnuala McAuliffe, Dr. Peter McParland and Prof. Shane Higgins on Tuesday at the eleventh hour.”
They urged national health authorities to “ensure such an event never happens again.”
Price’s lawyers said she suffered nervous shock and intense grief after learning that her son was a “normal, healthy baby.”
The case drew wide-spread attention to the horrific reality of abortion soon after Ireland legalized the killing of unborn babies. The country allows abortions up to 12 weeks for any reason and later in pregnancy for fetal anomalies and other limited circumstances.
Parents frequently report feeling pressured to abort their unborn babies after a prenatal diagnosis. A recent study highlighted in Scientific American found that many mothers of children with Down syndrome felt pressured to have abortions. Several years ago, a writer at The Guardian also shared his shock after a doctor pressured his wife to consider an abortion because their son had a cleft lip.
LifeNews Note: File photo.
