As the average age of parents increases around the world, the possibility of severe birth defects has increased, as well.
Advances in genetics and other prenatal technologies have granted doctors the ability to accurately screen fetuses for an increasing number of disabilities and disorders.
The adoption of screening has helped countless families through treatment of prenatal disorders or, in severe cases, the abortion of fetuses when doctors and parents believe the disorder will have too great an impact on the resulting child’s life.
As with all medical procedures, prenatal screening is not always performed perfectly, and around the world several hundred malpractice cases have been brought over claims of “wrongful birth” and “wrongful life” in the last 20 years.
Wrongful birth suits seek to compensate parents for the time and money consumed through caring for a child with a severe disability, while wrongful life cases seek compensation for the child and the hardships of coping with a severe disability.
While the idea of these cases seems macabre, if the plaintiffs can prove a doctor was negligent in counseling parents, performing genetic screenings or withholding results, parents should have a claim for compensation for the costs of treatment and care of their disabled child.
Doctors are not always at fault in these cases, primarily due to the rapid evolution of genetic screening technology, but if parents are not given the necessary information from their doctor either through an incorrectly applied test or the withholding of information from parents, the doctor should be held accountable for the results.
Genetic screening is a rapidly evolving field and a minefield for the medical profession. In Israel, where consanguineous marriage, marriage between second or first cousins, is relatively common, parents turning to prenatal screening to ensure against birth defects and wrongful birth cases are on the rise.
Many of these prenatal tests are well established and continue to grow more accurate as technology evolves, but many emerging tests are still imprecise and are being marketed to worried parents before they have been properly evaluated.
Wrongful life cases offer special challenges over wrongful birth cases because the child’s alternative to being born with a disability is often an abortion. While an abortion in a wrongful birth case would have hypothetically allowed the parents to continue living their lives normally, the child bringing the wrongful life case would never have existed.
The parents in a wrongful life case would obviously have benefited financially from aborting a severely disabled child, but whether the child would have benefited from such a decision is a nearly impossible question to answer. As human beings we place great value on life, but it is difficult for us to say whether living a severely disabled life would be preferable to never existing. Regardless of the answer to this question, if a child is born with a severe disability, they deserve compensation if the doctor failed to adequately perform his duties.
Some critics of wrongful birth and wrongful life cases worry the practice forces the law to place less value on disabled lives. They also argue parents pursuing a wrongful birth suit effectively says the parents wish the child was never born.
These claims are sensational and ignore the real possibility of doctors making mistakes and missing diagnoses of serious disorders. While many medical malpractice suits are unwarranted, the system exists to hold doctors accountable for the mistakes they can make as fallible human beings.
The severity of the disorder and evidence of negligence should obviously dictate the outcome of the case, but parents who believe the medical system has failed them should be allowed to make their case in a court of law. Seeking compensation for the monetary expenses caring for a disabled child has created does not mean the parents do not love their child, and it certainly does not make a disabled child’s life unimportant.
Parents pay a great deal of money for prenatal screening and both the parents, and children deserve to be compensated if doctors fail to perform these procedures correctly.
 
Andrew Shockey is a 21-year-old biological engineering junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]