Last week Planned Parenthood agreed to pay $2 million to the family of Tonya Reaves.
Reaves was a 24-year-old woman who died due to a botched abortion back in July of 2012. Her death is tragic, and those responsible should be held accountable–there is no question about that. However, as some have pointed out, last December a Seattle couple was awarded $50 million in a “wrongful birth” lawsuit.
The suit was filed by a Seattle couple who contended they would have aborted their son (now five years old) had they known he would be born with a genetic defect.
Tests were performed in utero to determine the likelihood the child would have some sort of genetic abnormality; according to LifeSiteNews, the tests showed a “50-50” possibility of a defect, but those results were never shared with the couple. The couple claimed had they known about the test results, they would have aborted their son. A jury awarded the couple $50 million for their “lifelong inconvenience.”
I don’t know how you tell your son you wish he had never been born or that he is a lifelong inconvenience. Wrongful birth lawsuits treat children like a burden rather than a blessing, and when someone who files a wrongful birth lawsuit can receive 25 times what someone in a wrongful death lawsuit receives, the implications are troubling.
Abby Johnson (former Planned Parenthood employee, now a pro-life activist) took to Facebook with this to say:
“Let’s recap. Planned parenthood kills a woman and her child. The family sues for wrongful death and gets $2 million. Let me also explain that $2 million dollars is basically chump change for Planned Parenthood. My former affiliate alone has $20 million sitting in their endowment.
“A family has a baby that they would have aborted if they would have known that he would be born with Down’s syndrome. Because they weren’t told before he was born, they sue and were awarded $50 million in a wrongful birth lawsuit.
“Just wow. “
