Inclusion Daily Express -- Dutch Court Backs Parents In 'Wrongful Life' Case

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Dutch Court Backs Parents In 'Wrongful Life' Case
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
April 6, 2005

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS--The Dutch Supreme Court on March 18 ruled that lower courts were correct in ordering a hospital and midwife to pay life-time medical and living expenses to a girl for not performing certain genetic tests on her before she was born.

The court also ordered Leiden University Medical Centre and the midwife to compensate Kelly Molenaar, now 11, and her parents for the emotional injuries they suffered when the girl was born with mental and physical disabilities.

The parents accused the midwife of refusing to run genetic tests which they had requested. The couple said that they likely would have aborted the pregnancy if the tests had turned up a high risk for disabilities in the fetus.

According to a brief story in the British Medical Journal, the court determined that the decision not to perform the tests was a professional error, and were therefore responsible for the girl's medical costs.

This 'wrongful life' suit, as the journal called it, was similar to the case of Nicolas Perruche in France. In 2001, France's highest court ruled that Perruche could sue his mother's physicians because they had not detected that his mother had caught rubella, a virus similar to the measles, during her 1983 pregnancy. Because of her infection Nicolas was born blind and deaf, and has mental retardation.

Like the parents of Kelly Molenaar, Nicolas' parents said that they would have had him aborted if they had known he would have disabilities.

The French National Assembly passed a law the following year to stop people with disabilities from filing such 'wrongful life' or 'wrongful birth' lawsuits against doctors for allowing them to be born. Molenaar's case has prompted Dutch lawmakers to consider a similar measure.

Related:
British Medical Journal
"'Wrongful Birth' Lawsuits" (Inclusion Daily Express Archives)

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