Politics
Monday June 5, 2006
U.S. Appeals Court Allows Child to Sue Over Failed Abortion
TODAY'S HEADLINES
E-MAIL
PRINT
By Gudrun Schultz
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, June 5, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A state appeals court has ruled that a woman can sue a Birmingham abortion provider for damages over injuries suffered by her child during a failed abortion attempt.
A lower court ruling had refused the woman’s lawsuit, with Circuit Judge Robert Vance Jr. saying the mother could not sue on her own behalf. The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals agreed, but reversed the ruling saying the woman, known by her initials as L.K.D.H, could sue Planned Parenthood of Alabama on behalf of her child, reported the Associated Press today.
The woman underwent an abortion procedure at Planned Parenthood’s Birmingham clinic. Her child survived the procedure and was later born with injuries that included a hole in her heart and a reversed tube carrying oxygen from her lungs to her heart, “causing her body not to be able to receive enough oxygen.” The woman blamed the clinic for causing the injuries.
Judge Glenn Murdock, one of the five judges to reverse the lower court ruling, wrote in his statement, “Neither the United States Supreme Court nor the Supreme Court of Alabama has ever ruled that a medical provider, or for that matter a mother, can engage, with some blanket of constitutional protection, in negligent or reckless conduct that deforms or injures a child so long as the deformity or injury is inflicted on the child before it leaves the womb.”
Such a position would allow abortion clinics to operate “as carelessly or recklessly as they wish without bearing any responsibility…It would be hard to imagine a more troubling development in our law,” he wrote.
A Birmingham attorney, Eric Johnston, who has assisted in writing anti-abortion bills considered by the Legislature, said the decision is significant because it holds a health care worker responsible for injuries caused to a child before birth.
“The fact it was during an abortion doesn’t change that,” Johnston said.
The state director of Planned Parenthood, Larry Rodick, declined comment to the AP.
Just last month an abortion clinic in Birmingham had its license suspended after unqualified staff gave a woman in the later stages of pregnancy the early-term abortion drug RU-486.
Six days later the woman was taken to hospital “with the head of a baby protruding. While at the hospital, [she] delivered a stillborn, macerated, six pound, four ounce baby,” according to a report by the Alabama Department of Public Health.
The report said the Summit Abortion Clinic had falsified their records to indicate a physician had attended the woman at the clinic.
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Alabama Abortion Clinic Closed After Botched RU-486 Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06052310.html
Back to TopLatest Headlines
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase out Lab Rats
- Ohio Supreme Court Allows Planned Parenthood to Conceal Abortion Records in Sexual Abuse Case
- LifeSiteNews Canada Day and Independence Day Message. Taking a few days off. LSN returns Monday July 6
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Pro-Life Groups Announce New Colorado Personhood Initiative
- Judge Puts Kibosh on DC Gay "Marriage" Referendum
- Al Franken Win Hands Supermajority to Senate Democrats
- Group Funded by Canadian Bishops' D&P Joins with Others to Denounce the "Natural Family" and "Family Rights"
- Financially Troubled Planned Parenthood of El Paso Closes Doors
- Abortion Linked to Subsequent Pre-Term Births, New Research Again Confirms
- New Orleans Homosexual Couple Ask Fed. Court to Overturn Marriage Amendment
- Slim Hope Of New Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Promoting Pro-Life, Pro-Family Issues
- Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Caught Involved in Homosexual Encounters
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Northern Ireland Politician Cleared of Wrongdoing after Reiterating Christian Teaching on Homosexual Acts
- UK Conservative Leader Speaks at Gay Pride Fundraiser
- More Letters to the Editor on Canadian Catholic Development and Peace Scandal (July 1)
- Letters to the Editor - Readers Respond to Development and Peace Scandal
- Watch This Dramatic New Video on Catholic Bishops Conference Funding of Pro-Abortion Groups
Most Read this Week
- Homosexual Duke U. Director Charged with Offering Adopted 5-Year-Old for Sex
- Famed Fr. Corapi Calls Canadian Bishops' Dissent from Humanae Vitae "Catastrophic"
- Pope: It is a Childish Faith to Oppose the Church Teaching on Life and Family
- LifeSiteNews Detailed Response to Canadian Bishops' Whitewash Report on Development and Peace
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase Out Lab Rats
- Is Pro-Choice the New Pro-Life?
- Swedish Parents Won't Tell if Child is Boy or Girl as Gender Experiment
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.