French Court Extends "Wrongful Birth" Ruling to Down Syndrome.(Brief Article)

Broadening an earlier decision that awarded damages for the birth of a disabled child, France's highest court ruled November 28 that a doctor should be held responsible for neglecting to diagnose an unborn baby's Down syndrome. The Cour de Cassation held that the mother should have had the opportunity to abort him if she had known he had the condition.

Many in France immediately condemned the decision and the judges' declaration that the child, known as Lionel, was "unlucky to be born," according to The Observer. Children with disabilities gathered with their families on the steps of the Cour de Cassation soon after the ruling was announced, The Observer reported, demonstrating against the court's decision with the slogan, "We are wanted and we are loved."

"I think with great sadness of all families who have welcomed Down syndrome children, who have showered them with love and received great love in return," Andre Vingt-Trois, Catholic bishop of Tours, told the Christian Science Monitor. "This ruling amounts to a declaration that such love was worthless."

The decision is the second recent ruling by the court allowing so-called "wrongful birth" lawsuits. In July 2001, the court ordered a laboratory and a doctor to pay Nicolas Perruche because he was born with birth defects caused by his mother's undiagnosed case of German measles. His mother testified that she would have had an abortion if she knew she had the disease.

Lionel was born in 1995 with Down syndrome, according to the Monitor. His mother sued her doctor after her son's birth, arguing that "she would have aborted if she had been given a correct prenatal diagnosis," the Monitor reported.

The court's decisions have created an uproar in France. "Certain judges still believe that it is better to be dead than to be handicapped," Xavier Mirabel of the Collective against Handiphobia told the Monitor. The disability rights group has filed its own ...