Article Text
PDF
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Overruling of law said to establish the “right not to be born”
The French government has given in to public pressure and overturned a controversial legal ruling which recognised the right of a disabled chld to seek damaages. Most notably, the ruling, widely described as establishing a child's right “not to be born”, had provoked “outrage” amongst groups defending the rights of the disabled and led to a ban on prenatal scans by French gynaecologists. Once again, only parents will be able to seek damages but some people think the ruling has been misinterpreted.
The Perruche judgment, a controversial ruling which has been said to establish the “right not to be born”, has now been overruled by a majority of the National Assembly of the French Parliament.1, 2 A bill has been put forward which states “no one can sue for damages for the sole fact of their birth”. It was considered by the senate until January 22, 2002.2
In 1982, Josette Perruche discovered red spots covering her four year old daughter. The child was diagnosed with German measles. Mrs Perruche told her …
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Hostile environments? Down’s syndrome and genetic screening in contemporary culture
- Medical paternalism and the fetus
- Disability and narrative: new directions for medicine and the medical humanities
- Preserving women’s reproductive autonomy while promoting the rights of people with disabilities?: the case of Heidi Crowter and Maire Lea-Wilson in the light of NIPT debates in England, France and Germany
- Is there a ‘new ethics of abortion’?
- Prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion: a result of the cultural turn?
- Is there a “right not to be born”? Reproductive decision making, options and the right to information
- Expressivism at the beginning and end of life
- A legacy of silence: the intersections of medical sociology and disability studies
- Investigation of a cluster of children with Down's syndrome born to mothers who had attended a school in Dundalk, Ireland