Courtesy: Instagram
woman sues for wrongful birth
(77WABC) – A 20-year-old woman who sued her mother’s doctor, claiming that she should never have been born, has won millions in damages.
Evie Toombes, a star showjumper from the United Kingdom, launched the landmark “wrongful conception” case against her mother’s doctor due to being born with spina bifida. The spinal defect means that Evie sometimes spends 24 hours a day connected to tubes.
Toombes took her mother’s ob-gyn, Dr. Philip Mitchell, to court over his failure to properly advise her mother while she was pregnant. Evie Toombes claims that if Dr. Mitchell had told her mother she needed to take folic acid supplements to minimize the risk of spina bifida affecting her baby, she would have put off getting pregnant. This, in turn, would have meant that Evie would never have been born.
The judge ruled that had Toombe’s mother been “provided with the correct recommended advice, she would have delayed attempts to conceive.”
“In the circumstances, there would have been a later conception, which would have resulted in a normal healthy child,” she said, awarding Toombes the right to a large payout.
Toombes’ lawyers have said that the exact sum has not been calculated yet. Legal experts say it’s at least several million because the payout calculated would be based on the cost to cover her lifelong medical needs.
