Pregnancy court case

panda100 · 22-03-2006 5:06pm #1

This was in the medical supplement of the Irish Times yesterday-

A women suing a hospital after giving birth to a baby girl despite having an abortion was given no guarantees that the termination would be succesful.a British court heared yesterday.
Stacey Dow (21) of Perth has launched a 250,000 euro civil damages claim against Tayside University Hospitals NHS trust fund for the 'financial burden' of raising her daughter,Jade,who she had when she was 16.
Miss Dow decided to have an abortion when she fell pregnant with twins.But a few months later she discoverd she was still pregnant witn one of the twins,by which time a second abortion was too late.

Was Just wondering what people thought of this?You have to feel sorry for the five year old kid who will grow up to know now that she was evidently not wanted and was a 'financial burden' on her mother?Intresting case though-what do you think?

tabatha · 22-03-2006 5:15pm

well it was her choice and they did "mess up". i think that they should bear the brunt. its hard enough to go through an abortion im sure, but to be told your still pregnant with the second twin must be shocking. i think 250k is a very conservative figure.

rsynnott · 22-03-2006 5:44pm

tabatha wrote:

well it was her choice and they did "mess up". i think that they should bear the brunt.
.

Depends. Do they guarantee results? If not, it'd be unreasonable to sue; it'd be like suing a pharmaceutical company because you became pregnant on the pill.

Cnoc16 · 22-03-2006 5:45pm

Why did she not give the child up for adoption, then she would not have the 'burden' as she sees it, of raising a child.

22-03-2006 6:39pm

Some people don't agree with adoption at all. No, that's not hypocritical.

As for the case, guess it's fair enough to expect them to fork out the money

simu · 22-03-2006 7:14pm

I'd see it as just her trying to secure her daughter's financial future tbh.

pretty*monster · 22-03-2006 7:25pm

It's fair enough.
If I paid for an operation and it was done wrong I'd sue. This is the same issue.

The_Minister · 22-03-2006 11:16pm

Poor kid, I'd smack the mother just for doing that, casting it as a weight around her neck that she would have gladly gutted.....
She doesn't deserve to keep him. That kid will grow up knowing his mother wanted him dead, and was sorry that he lived.

Larianne · 22-03-2006 11:27pm

Well it could be more a case of the woman, who was only 16 at the time, felt she was too young to bring up a child. She hadn't even finished secondary school, let alone college and didn't want to bring up a child if she couldn't afford to give it the best possible life she could. Now, since she has had the child due to the hospital fecking up, she wants the money to support her child.

panda100 · 23-03-2006 1:35pm

Larianne wrote:

Well it could be more a case of the woman, who was only 16 at the time, felt she was too young to bring up a child. She hadn't even finished secondary school, let alone college and didn't want to bring up a child if she couldn't afford to give it the best possible life she could. Now, since she has had the child due to the hospital fecking up, she wants the money to support her child.

yeah thats true but it must just be awful for the poor kid.I'm sure the women would be getting child support etc if she wanted it.Its not really about money for the kid.The goverment will help her with that.You dont need thousands and thousands of euro to support a kid and you'd think at this stage since the child is 5 the mum wouldnt drag her child through all this pain of knowing she wasnt wanted to begin with.

panda100 · 23-03-2006 1:38pm

pretty*monster wrote:

It's fair enough.
If I paid for an operation and it was done wrong I'd sue. This is the same issue.

Really?even when your your own daughters feelings and the impact of knowing she should have been aborted will affect her for the rest of her life?
This isnt just 'another' botched operation now.There is another person feelings involved

Dudess · 26-03-2006 4:09pm

I'm sure the mother does love and want her child now. She's suing the hospital for it's negligence, not "saddling" her with a kid. And now she has a bit of financial security for herself and her family.

jsr · 27-03-2006 12:30pm

The child is five years old and while they tend to be a sharp bunch who pick much more than you would expect I don't think it would be hard to keep the nature of the case from the child. He/She will spot something is up but the details can be kept from 'em. I doubt evey much that they read the papers.
The mother is not asking a lot, she could have gone the "mental angush" line and looked for more if the case was just bout money. Not sure if she will win her case though

The Sweeper · 27-03-2006 4:27pm

So what, it's better for her to sue the hospital for loadsa dosh because her existing child causes her mental anguish, as opposed to a financial burden??

Fact: children cost money. They are a weight on your finances. I know people who put off having children because they couldn't afford them; eventually they have them anyway because the fact is you can never afford kids. You just get on with it when you have them. The woman in the news item didn't want, couldn't afford, opted not to have that financial weight. The hospital she entrusted to carry out her decision made a mess of it. They put her through both the emotional stress of an abortion, then she still had to go ahead and have the remaining twin baby.

The fact that they did not do something properly five years ago should have no bearing on the way that woman feels about her existing child now. It is completely possible to love something now when you didn't have love for it in the past.

I think people are assuming that she's suing the hospital because she hates her existing child. I think it's far more likely - as Simu says - that she's making damn sure she capitalises on their error to provide financial security for herself and the child that, after all, she said from the outset she couldn't afford to support.

Dave! · 27-03-2006 5:16pm

What the hell did they take out of her then?

StupidLikeAFox · 27-03-2006 5:24pm

Id be surprised if the hospital didnt have themselves covered somewhere in the fine print for this sorta thing

The_Minister · 27-03-2006 5:27pm

DaveMcG wrote:

What the hell did they take out of her then?

They didn't. Generally for early abortions they throw some kind of salt on it and burn the baby to death.(chemically burn not burn burn:D )

The Sweeper · 27-03-2006 7:05pm

Firespinner wrote:

They didn't. Generally for early abortions they throw some kind of salt on it and burn the baby to death.(chemically burn not burn burn:D )

Generally on bulletin boards people post complete, total and utter crap because their religion teacher told them something once and they're too blinkered to actually research facts before they post things on the internet.

See: above.

You're not just wrong, you're so way wrong you may actually be coming back around towards right.

The Sweeper · 27-03-2006 7:12pm

DaveMcG wrote:

What the hell did they take out of her then?

I would say they probably performed an early abortion using the suction method, where they insert, basically, a tiny suction tube into the womb via the cervix, and in a short procedure they remove the foetus. That would account for how they got one and missed the other.

If it was a very early stage abortion, they may have had no reason to suspect there was another developing foetus left behind, QED a baby.

Women can experience cramps and bleeding after an abortion which may have hidden the lack of a menstrual period, hence the woman whose suing the hospital didn't realise she was still pregnant until it was too late for her to legally complete the termination.

Nevyn · 27-03-2006 7:13pm

Apparently she was carrying twins so they aborted the first fetus they found
and never checked to be sure that her womb was clear.

They misdiagnoised from the outset as an ultrasound is done for terminations to determind the position of the implanted embro or the fetus.
That scan should have shown that she was carrying twins.

Firespinner you really have no idea, really go and learn a few facts in stead of scaremongering.

27-03-2006 7:27pm

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

Generally on bulletin boards people post complete, total and utter crap because their religion teacher told them something once and they're too blinkered to actually research facts before they post things on the internet.

See: above.

You're not just wrong, you're so way wrong you may actually be coming back around towards right.

No, I think he's so way off that right is marked with "here be dragons".

Dudess · 27-03-2006 7:31pm

In fairness, what Firespinner's talking about is the saline abortion method, whereby some of the amniotic fluid is removed and replaced with a concentrated salt solution. This then poisons the unborn foetus. However it is rarely used.

The Sweeper · 27-03-2006 9:17pm

Eh, for "rarely" please read "these days, never in legal abortion in the Western world".

Dudess · 27-03-2006 9:34pm

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

Eh, for "rarely" please read "these days, never in legal abortion in the Western world".

No need for the smugness. I got that information from unplanned-pregnancy.com, not a crazy pro-life site, and there's no mention of it being illegal - just that it's used less frequently.

Dudess · 27-03-2006 9:52pm

Well if the sites are out of date, they generally can't be by more than 10 years or so. Seemingly it's illegal in Sweden and Japan all right. No doubt it's highly unlikely to be practised whether officially illegal or not though.

The_Minister · 27-03-2006 10:51pm

It was the saline solution that I was referring to (couldn't remember the name). I didn't know that it was rare - I thought it was pretty standard. A woman who survived a saline injection was going to come to talk at UCD about it but wasn't allowed.

The Sweeper · 28-03-2006 4:56pm

I can't tell if that would be because it's outmoded scaremongering, or information on abortion.

And Dudess, wind your neck back in. I wasn't being smug, just pointing out a fact.

Dudess · 28-03-2006 5:12pm

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

Dudess, wind your neck back in. I wasn't being smug, just pointing out a fact.

I know you were, but it smacked of sarcasm. If you weren't being sarcastic though, apolojeez.

Mortmain · 29-03-2006 11:20am

panda100 wrote:

This was in the medical supplement of the Irish Times yesterday-

A women suing a hospital after giving birth to a baby girl despite having an abortion was given no guarantees that the termination would be succesful.a British court heared yesterday.
Stacey Dow (21) of Perth has launched a 250,000 euro civil damages claim against Tayside University Hospitals NHS trust fund for the 'financial burden' of raising her daughter,Jade,who she had when she was 16.
Miss Dow decided to have an abortion when she fell pregnant with twins.But a few months later she discoverd she was still pregnant witn one of the twins,by which time a second abortion was too late.

Was Just wondering what people thought of this?You have to feel sorry for the five year old kid who will grow up to know now that she was evidently not wanted and was a 'financial burden' on her mother?Intresting case though-what do you think?

I came across an English case similar to this a number of years ago. The woman in question sucessfully sued the clinic for botching the operation but the court awarded only nominal damages to compensate for pain suffered during childbirth. The reason they gave was that it was not desireable for a court to give the impression that having a child was something for which one should be compensated - it was not, in the eyes of the court, a punishment. I can see the reasoning behind the conclusion - not wanting to open floodgates etc. But it raises some interesting questions like, for example, what would happen if the child went on to commit some crime, through no fault of the parents, whichthen went on to have adverse effects on the parents lives?

The_Minister · 29-03-2006 6:13pm

Sorry just whipped around the internet to check, saline solution was commen but is no used infrequently. Apologises for the mistake.

The Corinthian · 30-03-2006 10:45am

panda100 wrote:

You have to feel sorry for the five year old kid who will grow up to know now that she was evidently not wanted and was a 'financial burden' on her mother?

TBH, my first reaction is that she should be happy that she was the one who got out alive.

rsynnott wrote:

Depends. Do they guarantee results? If not, it'd be unreasonable to sue; it'd be like suing a pharmaceutical company because you became pregnant on the pill.

I suspect this is what it will come down to as with any medical malpractice case - and legally this is only a medical malpractice case.

bluewolf wrote:

Some people don't agree with adoption at all. No, that's not hypocritical.

On what grounds?

The Corinthian · 30-03-2006 1:19pm

bluewolf wrote:

I think it was the idea of bringing another life into the world to be dumped into a home where (apparently it's true in America, which is where most of the people with such a viewpoint I've met are from) they'll have a high chance of staying in unless perfectly healthy and white and young etc. So it's just abandoning someone to suffer away, instead of ending the life before they know about any of it.

Given the alternative to adoption I can see a more than a few adpotees disagreeing with your logic.

Or something.
I think I see where they're coming from but am not best at explaining it.

Or something... I see...

Pregnancy court case

Comments