Arizona 'wrongful birth' law.

[Swamptribe]

How nice, now women aren't even to know the details about their own bodies.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/03/07 ... abortions/

The entire Republican party has gone insane.

[mrs]

This makes me angry. Its completely ridiculous! I don't even know where to begin?

[longskirtlotsakids]

I'm all for it... as long as a parallel law is passed that prevents doctors from telling men that they have prostate cancer. Because then they may get a prostatecomy, and be unable to fulfill their Godly role as producers of seed. Sure, they may die young from a highly curable form of cancer, but at least their souls will be safe. I know THEY may feel that their life is more important than reproduction, but I believe my God doesn't feel that way, and that is more important.

[MarciaBrady]

This is why I refuse to refer to the anti-choicers as being pro-life. They don't value and care about life. It's all about controlling women.

[SisiL78]

They really need to stop trying to make "The Handmaid's Tale" a reality. Seriuosly, what next? My doctor will be able to keep any information that lowers my fertility?

Isn't Arizona the one that passed those crazy immigrant laws that let them ship legal emigrees to their home countries for looking threateningly towards an American... or something like that.

[browngrl]

This law is wrong. It boggles my mind that people in Arizona VOTED in these buffoons. Are people in Arizona upset about this or is this o.k with the majority? Will the state be making any provisions to help care for the children who result from this law?

*walks away,shaking her head*

[mrs]

This is why I refuse to refer to the anti-choicers as being pro-life. They don't value and care about life. It's all about controlling women.

I think I may adopt your term. Brilliant! I always had an issue with the "anti-choicers"supporting the death penalty. I could never grasp how you could justify both.

[MarsGirl]

A friend posted this on FB yesterday. I'm totally aghast.

[tropaka]

This has got to go against the Doctors' codes of ethics - I wonder if an medical associations have made comments on this. Last month a Canadian doctor suggested in a journal that people not be told the sex of a child until after the possibility of abortion to limit abortions determined by gender (mostly girls) - the response from ob gyn's was that it was unethical to withold info because the information belongs to the patient.

[MarsGirl]

Okay, just how many people in the US and Canada are having abortions based on the baby's gender?? Really, is that statistic really that high?? This sounds more like something that happens in China, where the country imposes restrictions on how many children a household can have. I seriously doubt that this is something that happens all the time in western civilization... it has to be an edge case.

Now... aborting a baby with certain medical conditions, I can see that played out more often...

[tropaka]

re gender-determined abortion - yes, it happens, more often in Asian communities but enough to skew male to female ratios in some of those groups. On the flip side, you can also do sex selective ivf apparently

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/16 ... l-journal/

anyway, witholding info has still got to be counter to medical ethics

[figuring it out]

I am sitting here stunned. Surely someone will IMMEDIATELY file a suit about this.

[MarsGirl]

Arizona (and Virginia) are suddenly making Ohio look a lot less backward.... :think:

[shesinsane]

Not only is witholding info against ethics, this law will take the patient out of the doctor/patient relationship. The party of smaller government wants doctors making medical decisions for their patients without telling the patient a decision needs to be made.

A smart counter to this law would be a panel full of parents of disabled children explaining how they started preparing as soon as they knew there was a problem. Don't make it about abortion, make it about educating parents so they can be better prepared to deal with the disabled baby once it's born - and how this law would rob parents of months of research and counseling prior to delivery.

A supporter of this law should just go for the gold and allow doctors to not tell a woman is she's pregnant. Only pregnant women can have abortions, so if a woman doesn't know she's pregnant, she won't consider abortion.

[Witsec7]

I posted a bit about this the other day on the IFB board I participate in. Its mostly male, and ignorant about prenatal testing and the reasons for it

This law is a work around on tort reform and aims to protect the medical providers from large lawsuit settlements.

On the same note, I read yesterday about an Oregon couple who are suing for wrongful birth.

News source unbroken link:

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... cy_he.html

The Levys filed suit against Legacy Health, claiming that Deborah Levy would have aborted her pregnancy had she known her daughter had the chromosomal abnormality. The lawsuit blames Legacy's Center for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in North Portland and a Legacy lab for allegedly botching the test. The Levys -- who dearly love their daughter, now 4 -- want Legacy to pay for the extra life-time costs of caring for her. That is estimated at about $3 million.

This afternoon, after nine days of trial in a downtown Portland courtroom, 12 jurors began deliberating in a case that gets to the core of how we view and value a life, and asks who should have to pay when that life is less than optimal. Experts say such "wrongful birth" cases are extraordinarily rare nationwide, for one, because prenatal tests such as the CVS are as much as 99.7 percent accurate and when they fail, few parents are willing to endure the scrutiny of a legal challenge. But wrongful birth lawsuits may be becoming more common as technology advances, more women in their late 30s or 40s give birth and millions of expectant mothers come to rely on genetic screenings.

[tropaka]

Apparently this law exists in nine other states.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Anyone have the text of the proposed law?

Also, what does it mean to say that "true malpractice suits" will be able to continue? If that was the case, not informing a woman of an ectopic pregnancy would NOT be protected, as that would result in a malpractice suit, not a wrongful birth suit.

"Wrongful birth" is a legal claim for compensation for having gone through a birth where you would have prevented or terminated the pregnancy.

"Wrongful life" is a claim on behalf of the child, essentially saying that if the condition was known, the child would have been better off not being born.

AFAIK, in Canada, "wrongful birth" lawsuits have been successful, while the courts have not recognized "wrongful life" as a cause of action.

There is an issue with wrongful birth lawsuits scaring OBs into pushing prenatal testing, instead of just setting out options and getting informed consent, because they are terrified that a parent will sue if they claim that a problem could have been detected. I know that I wasn't given full information about the pros and cons of prenatal testing - the default was to order the tests, and I had to refuse the tests, repeatedly, and document my refusal with reasons. I don't blame my individual OBs for this - they listened to my reasons, basically said "good point, makes sense" and put it in the file. I do think, however, that my care on this issue was governed more by fear of lawsuits than by genuine informed consent. I had to learn on my own, for example, that only 1 out of 50 women identified by the triple-screen test would actually have a problem, and that those women would go through tons of additional stress and could face an additional procedure that had a risk of miscarriage. (My first pregnancy was in 1998, and I do recognize that some procedures have changed.)

I'd also like to know if the proposed legislation affects professional discipline. In other words - can you make a professional complaint about a doctor who deliberately withholds information, as opposed to simply making a mistake?

[MarciaBrady]

Apparently this law exists in nine other states.

Which states?

[Austin]

Preventing or allowing not to? Both are wrong, IMO, but there is a distinction in what the doctor is allowed to do. If I lived in a state with this sort of law, I would make very sure that I knew my OB/GYN very well and had talked explicitly about this issue with him/her. I think most doctors, because of the ethical issues, do give their patients all of the information. If my physician was virulently anti-choice, I would know that about him or her (because I would make it my business to know).

This is a terrible law and legislators should stay out of medicine. Full stop.

[reds]

I posted a bit about this the other day on the IFB board I participate in. Its mostly male, and ignorant about prenatal testing and the reasons for it

This law is a work around on tort reform and aims to protect the medical providers from large lawsuit settlements.

On the same note, I read yesterday about an Oregon couple who are suing for wrongful birth.

News source unbroken link:

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... cy_he.html

Why is everything about a lawsuit these days? (not only in this, but with spilt coffee, suing God, suing the local weatherman for a wrong prediction.)

[Witsec7]

Why is everything about a lawsuit these days? (not only in this, but with spilt coffee, suing God, suing the local weatherman for a wrong prediction.)

If thats what you're looking for, I'm sure you'll find it. I pretty much restrict myself to print media, and most of the law suits covered (on the sites I view) significantly impact others. The hot coffee Mickey D's litigation is decades old btw.

Frankly wrongful birth is getting a lot of press lately and you can thank the regressive republicans for that.

[sriracha]

A supporter of this law should just go for the gold and allow doctors to not tell a woman is she's pregnant. Only pregnant women can have abortions, so if a woman doesn't know she's pregnant, she won't consider abortion.

This. The nuts are all about doubling down lately.

[formergothardite]

Didn't the McDonalds lawsuit involve more than a little hot coffee spilt? It was like third degree burns and skin grafts if I remember correctly. So it wasn't an uncalled for lawsuit, at least in my memory.

[reds]

If thats what you're looking for, I'm sure you'll find it. I pretty much restrict myself to print media, and most of the law suits covered (on the sites I view) significantly impact others. The hot coffee Mickey D's litigation is decades old btw.

Frankly wrongful birth is getting a lot of press lately and you can thank the regressive republicans for that.

But why is society so happy and eager to sue?

Is the new motto, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of a quick buck?"

Can someone sue the government for not giving everyone the "American Dream"?

What is wrong with having a disabled child and saying J'celle's line... "every child is a blessing?" Instead of saying, "Oh someone screwed up and now we are sueing because we are victims (and we can)."

(I bet i am going to get blasted now..) :tools-hammerdrill:

[CanadianHippie]

re gender-determined abortion - yes, it happens, more often in Asian communities but enough to skew male to female ratios in some of those groups. On the flip side, you can also do sex selective ivf apparently

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/16 ... l-journal/

anyway, witholding info has still got to be counter to medical ethics

You can't do sex selective ivf in Canada. You can only test for gender if it's to eliminate the possibility of sex-linked genetic disorders.