Toward rational boundaries of tort liability for injury to the unborn: prenatal injuries, preconception injuries and wrongful life.

Two recent cases, one from New York and one from Illinois, have again focused attention on injuries to the unborn. In the first of these, Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital,' the Illinois Supreme Court held that a child who suffered permanent disability to various organs, her brain and her nervous system as the result of the negligent transfusing of her Rh-negative mother with Rh-positive blood some nine years prior to the child's conception had a cause of action for negligence. In Becker v. Schwartz, 2 the New York Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Di-vision's decision in Park v. Chessin 3 which had recognized for the first time in American jurisprudence a "wrongful life" cause of action on behalf of a child born with a disabling kidney disease from which she died two and one-half years later. The so-called "wrongful life" count was based on the alleged malpractice of the defendant physicians in misadvising the child's prospective parents, whose previous child had died a few hours after birth from the same disease, that a second child would not suffer from the disease, thus allowing the parents to make a Park in holding that a wrongful life cause of action on behalf of an infant born with Downs syndrome (mongolism) was stated by a complaint alleging that the defendant-physicians did not advise the infant's parents of the increased risk of Downs Syndrome in children born to women over 35 nor of the availability of an amniocentesis test to determine whether the fetus would be born with the condition.