Berlin, Germany — A wrongful birth debate has blown up in Germany after the country's top court ruled that a doctor who failed to spot a baby's disability during prenatal scans should pay compensation to the child's parents.
The child in question, named only as Sebastian, was born with no hands or lower arms and with seriously deformed legs. He is now five years-old and needs continual attention, say his parents, who sued the gynecologist concerned to pay for his care. They also sought damages for his mother, who now suffers from depression.
Sebastian's mother told the court that although she loved him, she would have had a late abortion if she had known he was going to be deformed. She also said that she was depressed and even suicidal after his birth.
She and her husband argued that the doctor should have been able to see the deformities in scans conducted during and around the 20th week of pregnancy — when an abortion of a deformed baby would be possible.
The court's decision is the first legal confirmation of the 1995 law that removed the time limit for aborting unborn children with physical deformities if the health of the mother was deemed to be put at risk by the pregnancy. That change, which removed a deformed baby abortion limit of 22 weeks, was criticized by many as anti-constitutional as unborn children there are considered capable of independent survival from around the 22nd week of pregnancy.
Following this legal line, the court awarded the parents 275,800 euros as well as an additional compensation payment to the mother of 10,225 euros.
The court's decision is in line with French court rulings last year that also made individual doctors liable if they fail to tell a pregnant woman of problems with her unborn child that she later says she would have aborted. The French ruling drew strong opposition from doctors, pro-life organizations and advocates for the disabled.
German doctors are protesting at the court decision, led by Professor Joerg-Dietrich Hoppe, president of the German Doctors' Association (GDA).
He said in a statement, “Everyone has been given a right by this decision, to propagate in a made-for-measure fashion. It is particularly alarming that precisely those regulations on pregnancy termination, which have only just been changed in order to prevent selecting out disabled life, are being abused and used more like an instrument of selection of human life. This understanding of human life stands in most crass contradiction to professional medical ethics and the values of a humane society.”
The Federal Court said in its decision that an abortion of the baby would have been legal in view of the expected severe disabilities of the child as well as the danger of the mother committing suicide after the birth.
A statement reads, “The fact that after the birth depression did actually emerge and was as strong as to be an illness with a latent danger of suicide at least in the first weeks, supports this prognosis.”
But the doctors remain furious.
The GDA's stark statement said, “The aim of medical treatment is to heal, alleviate or prevent illnesses and disabilities — not to kill the sick and disabled.”
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
