ROCHESTER, NY, February 19, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A husband and wife who sued a New York hospital after they aborted a child they were wrongly told would suffer a disability has lost its lawsuit.
Collette and Jeffrey Alger sought emotional and physical damages from the abortion they procured on mistaken grounds. It is not clear from the records what disability or abnormality the couple was told the child suffered from.
A jury in Monroe County, New York, ruled that the University of Rochester Medical Center, Strong Memorial Hospital, and the director of the university's Cytogenetics Laboratory, Nancy Wang, had been negligent in the medical advice they gave the couple about prenatal tests – but those results did not compel the Algers' decision to abort their child. It cleared another worker of negligence.
The Monroe County Supreme Court issued its original ruling on January 29.
The couple appealed, but a five-judge panel of the Fourth Judicial Department in the Appellate Division upheld the ruling on February 7.
“Their negligence was not a proximate cause of plaintiffs’ injuries,” they wrote.
Observers said the ruling presented a cautionary tale about putting too great a weight on expert diagnoses of an unborn child's condition and, more importantly, about the consequences of viewing the disabled as unworthy of life.
“This is really a heartbreaking story, and another example of why recognizing the dignity and rights of all human beings is so important,” Adam Cassandra, communications manager of Human Life International, told LifeSiteNews. “Every human life has value from the moment of conception – every single one, regardless of race, gender, or physical ability.”
“The disabled in particular are in danger as long as abortion is allowed to exist. And it doesn't help that even 'pro-life laws' continue to have exceptions allowing the abortion of people with disabilities,” he said.
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He concluded, “There's no way to know what impact the life of a disabled child can have on the world, even if she's only alive for a few seconds.”