Wow. This story is dreadful. Basically, a woman decided to have an abortion for financial reasons, went in to have it done, and apparently the doctor didn’t perform the abortion correctly, so she was still pregnant. Three months later, she went to a doctor, who didn’t detect her pregnancy-she was 20 weeks pregnant. So now she’s suing the doctor who performed the abortion, as well as the doctor who didn’t detect her pregnancy, for child rearing expenses.
How exactly does one mess up that bad during an abortion? I’m guessing that it had to have been a medical abortion, becuase how could a fetus even continue to develop after a surgical abortion, unless the doctor (or I guess the equipment used) really messed up. Also, wasn’t she supposed to go in for a check up exam a few weeks after an abortion to make sure that everything went well? It seems like there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.
But I have heard of doctors not diagnosing pregnancies. I had a friend (who was on Devo Provera) who after a while started to feel sick. She repeatedly went to her doctor, and her doctor repeatedly told her nothing was wrong. After a few months of this, she went to get a second opinion. 10 days later, she gave birth.
The whole story is just scary. Obviously people in the medical feild need to pay closer attention to what’s going on..
Well, I guess it all works out well in the end. She wanted to abort the baby because she couldn’t afford it. Now, she can afford it, because screw-up doctors will have to pay for it. No abortion, and no cost. Win-win.
Yeah. Win, win. Except the whole being pregnant against her will, thing. And the incompetency of the doctors, who put the health of both mother and baby in jeopardy by keeping a woman inadvertently pregnant.
Abortions are technically difficult. Dr. Bryant is actually a high risk pregnancy doctor. Ob/Gyns don’t have to pay for wrongful birth for tubal ligations anymore. Dr. Bryant has gone on to be a doctor at UCSF in high risk pregnancy and was regarded as a rising star at the Brigham. This job was a moonlighting job. It’s hard to understand why they don’t do ultrasound before and after the procedure at planned parenthood, but if the termination was done really early, then it might have been missed. Generally people sign a 10 page consent acknowledging that a lot can go wrong. It’s not a perfect world. I don’t think this woman deserves any money at all. The idea of another human being having the ability to give someone a perfect life without paying the costs of their own actions, i.e., screwing up and getting pregnant at the age of 43 is ludicrous. Abortions are not like getting the oil changed on your car….They’re far more dangerous and tricky and are not perfect procedures with perfect outcomes. Probably, Dr. Bryant shouldn’t have agreed to do the procedure on this woman and should have protected herself against this sort of liability exposure, i.e. an angry 43 year old with an unwanted child….
They are supposed to do ultrasoud before and after tha abortion. She would have been about a month pregnant at the time of her abortion (according to the info in the article) and that would have shown up on the ultrasound.
I’m not saying the doctor is 100% to blame here. A few people were probably careless.
I know damn well that abortions do not always have perfect outcomes- that’s why I sympathize so much with women who have had botched abortions.
This is addressed to mdcr, ummm you sound really ignorant because while yes you do sign a consent describing the risks, the doctors should have detected the pregnancy. A part of the consent is that the pregnancy is detected and once again there is an attempt at terminating it. Once there is no follow through with their end of the bargain she has every right to sue them for malpractice. Her age has nothing to do with the suit, if anything, if they thought the abortion could not havebeen performed on her because of her age they shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Also the consent is not the same at every place so it may not have been as thorough as it should have been. There is no way this couldn’t have been the doctors fault, whether there are risks or not because they didn’t follow through with all the procedures.
Very good site. Thanks!
Good site. Thank you!!!
Jenny Dreadful, I don’t understand your point about how the doctor’s incompetence endangered the baby’s health. It sounds like the doctor’s incompetence saved the baby’s life even though the mother didn’t want that. She does have the option to then give the baby up for adoption, but this woman seems to be a little too selfish for that. She thinks she can do a better job of teaching this unwanted child to be greedy and blame others for their own choices, sounds like a good idea to me. At least we call this freedom. One more thing, the state I live in tried to get a law passed to require ultrasounds before abortions, it was shot down by those people who are in favor of abortion because they think that it may decrease the number of abortions. They don’t want to make the pregnant woman change her mind about the abortion after seeing the living fetus. The abortion procedure is very effective (from a recent study 46 out of 65,000 abortions failed). This woman who is somewhat freaklike according to this study, should stop blaming somebody else for her life, and step up to the plate. But then if not for medical malpractice suits for failed abortions and other things, we wouldn’t be able to bitch about the rising cost of health care. We’re all going to pay for it in the end.
Malpractice clearly occured and better be addressed and compensated! Says:
December 26th, 2007 at 7:01 am
What! Wait a minute here, this woman initially went in to have an abortion and the procedure was clearly not done right. The point here is that a medical procedure was NOT performed correctly! Thats the issue and point here. This woman has faced extremely diffiicult decisions and praise her for being woman enough to try to do what is right now and raise her daughter instead of giving her away. Thank God the baby lived and survived the abortion and was born very healthy..thank God..but we cannot sit here and just scrutinize the womans initial action of undergoing an abortion…she and only she knows why she felt at the time out of desperation why she had to make that very difficult decision to undergo an abortion…..and malpractice did occur….nobody is perfect..NOBODY..however at least now she has chosen to raise her daughter and give her the best life possible and hell yes she is deserving of some sort of compensation for the ordeal of thinking the abortion was done and then the shock (which is a good shock) that she would soon have a daughter..again at least this woman does want to do the right thing now currently and have a life together with her daughter since she is here..so don’t try to beat up on this poor woman..think about your own lifes .yeah you’ve done ALOT of shit that YOU regret haven’t you..so who are YOU to even dare try to beat this lady down with ugly comments and criticism!!! She deserves to be compensated because the idiot abortion doctor committed malpractice from strictly a medical standpoint…
It would not be best for this baby to stay with his mother. what kind of a life would this miracle baby have with a bitter wanna be baby killer YES BABY KILLER!!! from the momment of conception this is a child. I pray the state will take this child and let someone who wants a baby to love raise this blessing.
I’m a little late to the party, but still-
The doctor does deserve to suffer some repercussions- there has to be some accountability (although the doc who saw her at 20 weeks seem to me to be more culpable, abortions DO fail now and then.) But how COLD is it to choose to sue for the cost of child rearing?
Can you imagine how her daughter is going to feel about this in a few years? Could this woman really not have called it anything else, anything that didn’t describe child rearing as an injury that she deserves damages for?
I went to have an abortion in January, and 2 weeks later the clinic called me back in for a sonogram and I found out that I was still pregnant and the doctor did not remove the baby. It still had a heartbeat. They told me I need to come in and repeat the procedure but I refused because why should I trust somebody to put me to sleep again and do a procedure that they couldn’t get right the first time? So I’m still pregnant now. I think she is right for suing the doctor because we went in for a procedure that was not done. You get put to sleep and leave that office believing that you’re no longer pregnant, when you truly are. I think thats sickening and emotionally distressing. These doctors need to take sonograms before and after the procedure to make sure they’ve completed it.
To Jay:
I had a surgical abotion 3 weeks ago and I went for the post check up 2 days ago where they advised me that they could still see “something” in the uterus. I freaked out, as naturally I thought all would be clear. Now I have to do another blood test to check if I am still pregnant or not, as the doctor who did the post-op checkup did not tell me anything about a possible heartbeat or anything.As far as I know, the uterus should be clear and there shouldn’t be anything there after 3 weeks. Has anyone got any advise on this, could this be just some blood or could I still be pregnant? Going back to doctor’s after weekend and really scared…I have no pain and no bleeding either, but I also find that all pregnancy symptoms that I had before the abortion are now gone.
Hey there,
I guess I am yet another of the 46 unlucky souls. I had an elective abortion performed 5 days ago. Today, I received a call from the covering doc (mine is on vacation) that the pathology lab was “unable to detect any product of conception” in the tissue sent to them. So.. there was no ultrasound, but somebody was, in fact, checking to see that they managed to end the pregnancy. They did not and they called immediately. I will have to reschedule. This was performed in a real hospital by a very reputable, and kind, OB. Mistakes happen, especially early on. I am no kid, 3 grandchildren, know what pregnant feels like. Certainly not irresponsible. Birth control does fail sometimes, that’s why there is tubal ligation. So.. the whole story. First time to have sex in 4 years, condom breaks, morning after pill fails, and the damned abortion doesn’t work. I was actually trying to have my tubes tied when I found out I was pregnant. Guess what I’m doing as soon as I recover?
Tez, I know how you feel. I had a surgical abortion on January 15th (I was about 11 weeks pregnant) because my parents forced me to (I’m 17 years old). I’ve gotten my period and all the pregnancy symptoms I had are gone but I’m starting to LOOK pregnant and I can feel movement in my uterus. My last period lasted maybe 2 hours spread out over 3 days and on day 2 of this period, I suffered severe abdominal pain with nausea. The last time I had this kind of pain, I found out I was pregnant the next day. I’m also feeling movement in my uterus. Is there any way the abortion didn’t work? Or that I could’ve gotten pregnant again DURING my period? They didn’t do an ultrasound after and the pregnancy test I took was inconclusive. If I’m still pregnant, I’d be about 20 weeks along now and I haven’t been taking very good care of myself at all so there’s a good chance that the baby would be completely screwed up. I’m so scared! Could someone please tell me what’s going on for the sake of my possible baby and my sanity?