Wrongful Birth?

From Boston.com:
BOSTON - A Boston woman who gave birth after a failed abortion has filed a lawsuit against two doctors and Planned Parenthood seeking the costs of raising her child.

The complaint was filed by Jennifer Raper, 45, last week in Suffolk Superior Court and still must be screened by a special panel before it can proceed to trial.

Raper claimed in the three-page medical malpractice suit that she found out she was pregnant in March 2004 and decided to have an abortion for financial reasons.

Dr. Allison Bryant, a physician working for Planned Parenthood at the time, performed the procedure on April 9, 2004, but it "was not done properly, causing the plaintiff to remain pregnant," according to the complaint.

Raper then went to see Dr. Benjamin Eleonu at Boston Medical Center in July 2004, and he failed to detect the pregnancy even though she was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, the lawsuit alleges.

It was only when Raper went to the New England Medical Center emergency room for treatment of pelvic pain in late September that year that she found out she was pregnant, the suit said.

She gave birth to a daughter on Dec. 7, 2004.

She is seeking damages, including child-rearing costs.

[…] Raper alleges in the suit that Planned Parenthood and Bryant were negligent for failing to end her pregnancy and that Eleonu was negligent for failing to see she was still pregnant.

God have mercy! Can anyone say “Culture of Death?” Can you imagine being this poor girl growing up?

Innocent Daughter: “Mommy, how come you don’t have to have a job?”

Mom: “Well, Honey, when you were still little and living in my tummy, Mommy tried to have you whacked. The men I hired to make the hit botched the job, and you were born anyway. So Mommy sued the nasty men because they were the reason you weren’t sent to the landfill, and so they owed me the money it would take to raise you.”

Less-Innocent Daughter: “Oh. Thanks, Mommy. I’ll remember that when you’re old and I need to take care of you.”

What has happened to us as a people, that a news story like this could ever possibly need to be written? We may have abolished slavery in this country, but it certainly hasn’t stopped us from treating people like things. I think we have completely missed the real point of Paul’s letter to Philemon.