Seven-year-old Alicia Hester was born with spina bifida, a disease that has paralyzed her from the chest down and impaired her mental ability. Her crippling condition, however, is the least of her problems at the moment.
Last week, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that as far as Ohio is concerned, there is no such thing as “wrongful life” or “wrongful birth.” Those are the grounds on which Alicia’s parents, Patricia and Laurence Hester, sued their two doctors for emotional distress and compensation for Alicia’s medical expenses. The Hester argument: They deserve money because Alicia “suffered damage based on the fact of her being born rather than aborted.”
In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that “judges and jurors are no more able to judge the value of life in a ‘normal’ condition (however that might be defined) as in a nonbeing.”
As if the Hesters’ legal action wasn’t horrific enough, in the same court on the same day, the same judges ruled that another set of parents, Theresa and James Simmener, were not entitled to damages for the birth of her son, who was born with a fatal heart condition. Theresa Simmener became pregnant after undergoing a certain sterilization procedure known as tubal banding. The Simmener’s boy died 15 months after he was born.
Anyone’s heart goes out to parents confronted with such a hardship — an unexpected, debilitating condition in their newborn child. But to say that it would have been better if the child had never been born? What have we come to? What exactly is it that prompts a new parent to begin casting about looking for someone to sue? How did it ever become socially acceptable in America for parents to state publicly that their child, for whatever reason, should never have been born — let alone for a mother to say explicitly, right in front of her child, that she would have aborted the child had she known of her condition?
The Ohio Supreme Court was right on the mark in its ruling. Unfortunately, not all judges are equally wise. Just last year, a New Jersey mother was awarded $1.8 million on the grounds that her son, suffering from Down’s Syndrome, should not be alive to burden her. Had her obstetrician performed the requisite prenatal tests and communicated the possibility for Downs Syndrome in her son, she would have aborted him. Should either or both sets of parents appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court, protector of the sacred right to “privacy” above all else, will likely be much friendlier to this most recent attempt at commodifying human life.
Thankfully, along with the recent wise court decisions, there have been some other signs of hope, much-needed reminders that the whole culture is not yet lost. I’m still in a state of ecstatic shock at what I witnessed on the Emmy Award ceremony last weekend. Patricia Heaton, accepting the Outstanding Actress Emmy for her role as a mother on the hit comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, stood in front of a rainbow coalition of ribbons representing every anti-life cause imaginable and said something so simple, yet so brave: “First I just want to thank God for thinking me up, and my mother for letting me come out, because life is really amazing.”
This on the same awards show that honored Will and Grace for its homosexual themes and characters (and which then gave new meaning to the whole idea of acceptance speeches), and on the same stage where Merle Marshall Daniels, president of Television Arts and Sciences, applauded writers’ willingness to tackle the issue of “a woman’s right to choose.” “Bold” and “brave” he called them. It was as laughable as when the author John Irving praised Miramax Films at the Academy Awards in March for its “bravery” in dealing with the abortion issue in the trumped-up movie version of his pro-abortion novel The Cider House Rules.
Heaton, once derided by television producer and Bill and Hillary Clinton intimate Linda Bloodworth-Thomason for her pro-life views, stood out like a light in the darkness that night, accepting her award as a wife, mother of four boys, and committed pro-life activist (she’s Honorary Chair of the Washington, D.C.-based Feminists for Life). She told People in 1998, “I used to use birth control, “but then once I started having kids, I thought, ‘I don’t want to stop this.’ Souls are eternal. A TV show may go on for nine years and then it’s over. I don’t think they’ll be watching reruns in heaven.”
Hopefully, sometime after the judicial smoke clears from all these sickening rounds of lawsuits and hearings and trials, Alicia Hester will come to know how beautiful her life is — spina bifida and all. And perhaps this beautiful life will somehow touch the hearts of her parents and whomever it was that first introduced them to the tragic concept of “wrongful birth.”
One would think that a mere glance at the long lists of couples ready, willing and anxious to adopt kids with Downs Syndrome and spina bifida would open their eyes to the tragedy of their callous claim.
