French obstetricians and specialists in prenatal diagnosis last week protested about a decision by France's highest court of appeal that upheld damages to a boy for “being born.”
The decision states that a child can be compensated for being born with a handicap or a malformation if a mother had not had the opportunity to ask for a therapeutic abortion because she had not been informed of the risk that could have been evaluated during prenatal diagnosis.
Compensation was awarded to two boys born with Down's syndrome. The court judged that further testing, notably amniocentesis, should have been proposed and that, informed of the risk, the mothers would have chosen therapeutic abortion.
The judgment confirmed a previous hotly disputed case, the Perruche case, in which compensation was awarded last year to Nicolas Perruche, a boy who had been born with severe malformations caused by rubella contracted by his mother during pregnancy.
Doctors deemed to be responsible have to pay compensation, normally covered by insurance. Doctors say they can now be condemned for not being able to predict a malformation with 100% certainty.
In France, where every year about 14000 babies are born with anomalies of varying severity, the Perruche precedent could encourage hundreds of parents to lodge a complaint. Dr Roger Bessis, president of the French College of Fetal Echography, said that the practice of antenatal diagnostic techniques would be threatened by insurance costs, which would inevitably rise.
Members of associations for handicapped people demonstrated in front of the court, protesting that the decision reflected contempt for handicapped children.
Dr Jean-François Mattéi, professor of paediatrics and genetics and a member of the French parliament, said that the Perruche ruling was both ethically and judicially wrong because there was no direct causal link between the possible fault of a doctor and a child's handicap.
Dr Mattéi has prepared a legislative proposal to be discussed by parliament in the coming weeks, according to which no one should be compensated for being born.
Figure.
HATTIE YOUNG/SPL
A three year old girl affected by Down”s syndrome