Wrongful birth and wrongful conception: a parent's need for a cause of action.

Wrongful birth, wrongful conception, and the Irish Constitution.

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...

Legal liability for failure to prevent pregnancy (wrongful pregnancy).

Can the conception of a child ever constitute damage recoverable in law? This article considers the liability of healthcare practitioners for failing to prevent a pregnancy. Developments leading to the recognition of wrongful pregnancy as a cause of (legal) action in South Africa (SA), are briefly outlined. The salient points of the relevant judgments by SA courts are set out to expose the rati...

Excusing by statute the missing elements of torts of eugenic nondisclosure.

How can there be an opinion at all about nothing? Reflect: when a man has an opinion, has he not an opinion about something? Plato** The precepts of physicians and natural philosophers about generation should also be studied by the parents themselves. GENERAL INTRODUCTION This paper concerns eugenic opportunity lost as a consequence of nondisclosure of eugenic information. The two words which m...

'Wrongful life' lawsuits for faulty genetic counselling: should the impaired newborn be entitled to sue?

A "wrongful life" suit is based on the purported tortious liability of a genetic counsellor towards an infant with hereditary defects, with the latter asserting that he or she would not have been born at all if not for the counsellor's negligence. This negligence allegedly lies in the failure on the part of the defendant adequately to advice the parents or to conduct properly the relevant testi...