Abortion by false pretense

Enola Straight · Post by **Enola Straight** » 2005-06-29 12:59am

I was looking through an older underground comic called Next Men in which one of the superheroes's unauthorized 5 month pregnancy is deemed unhealthy by the doctor: the child would be born a monster, so immediate termination is advised and performed.

Later, it is found out that the pregnancy was healthy, and she was tricked by the doctor who merely wanted to keep her superpowers unhindered by a child.

In the real world, what would be the legal rammifications for someone like this doctor?

Meeper · Post by **Meeper** » 2005-06-29 05:20am

I believe it's a capital offense to murder a fetus now, so he'd probably get charged with that; malpractice, plus probably some sort of civil suit for compensation for emotional stress.

Plus she'd probably rip him in half like a phonebook.

Xero Cool Down · Post by **Xero Cool Down** » 2005-06-29 05:28am

It happens right now. Doctors check for such things like mental retardation, and if the child is thought to be mentally retarded, many doctors will recommend an abortion. The problem is that often they are just about guessing at whether the child is retarded or not. I had a sister with Down's (died in infancy) who the doctors said was going to be perfectly normal, and a brother who the doctors said was definitely mentally retarded. They pushed hard for my mother to have an abortion. She didn't, and my is of perfectly normal intelligence.

I think in most cases the abortion is done early on, so I don't really think they can determine if the child is mentally impaired in any way, and I doubt they go to the bother of finding out, so it might be hard to find a case where a doctor is brought to court over being incorrect in determing if a child was mentally retarded.

I would think it would have been documented somewhere if a doctor was caught intentionally misleading the women to get her to have an abortion.

General Brock · Post by **General Brock** » 2005-06-29 05:06pm

I'm not sure, but when it happens the other way around, a doctor deliberately or accidentally hiding a positive test for defects and preventing an abortion, the doctor gets sued for damages incurred by the parents. The argument is they are now are saddled with unexpected and often exhorbitant special needs costs they would normally have avoided had the doctor been doing his or her job.