Medical Liability. Action call wrongful birth and wrongful life

Abstract

The civil liability’s evolution has led to the emergence of new claims for damage redress. This article analizes two of them:

wrongful birth and wrongful life actions. Both raise the question of if it is possible to consider life as a damage when a child is born with an illness or handicapped and the parents were not informed about that fact before the conception or during the pregnancy. The article handles this problem from a point of view of continuity in the institucion of the civil liability´s application; that is: trying to check if the elements needed for liability are met, because only in that case the damage should be repaired. From this approach, the main obstacles to this claims are, on the one hand, the damage claimed in the action and, on the other hand, the legal approach to the causal relationship. This last element of liability is difficult to assert in relation to a health professional whose behaviour just led to a mistake in the information received by the parents.