On this Second Sunday in Advent, as we eagerly anticipate the coming of the Christ-Child, the Word made flesh to dwell among us, it is a good time to reflect on the baby in the womb, the place where God dwells, suspended in the tranquillity of amniotic paradise.At least it should be.
But in our culture of death, there are two categories of life: not the sheep and goats of the afterlife, but the ‘rightful’ and ‘wrongful’ lives of our earthly existence.
Or non-existence.
For a Belgian Court of Appeal has adjudicated upon the matter of aborting the disabled, and thereby affirmed in Belgian law the concept of the ‘wrongful life’.
Imagine – insofar as you are able – the realm of disability, handicap, some imperfection in the flesh which sets one apart from normality. And then conceive – if you can – of a world in which a baby born disabled is determined to be a ‘wrongful life’, because doctors were negligent in diagnosing any abnormality in the foetus, and so erroneously permitted it to be born.
And so the parents of this ‘wrongful life’ are awarded compensation, not because of the innate disability of their baby, but because their child was never a ‘rightful’ human being: he lives only through the negligence of physicians; they made a mistake; he should have been aborted.
Damages in these cases consist of the cost of living for the child, which appear to be purely economical in nature, ie the cost of rearing the child for the person taking that task upon himself, including the extra costs related to the disability, and possibly also non-pecuniary loss for the child.
And so a court in Brussels – the political mind and spiritual heart of the European Union – divides its rightful citizens from the wrongful never-should-have-been citizens.
Being human is insufficient entitlement to this rightfulness, for the physically imperfect are destined to be despised, rejected, aborted.
Even after they are born.
A ‘wrongful life’ claim is a claim by a child, and this will always be a disabled child, issued by its representatives, ie most notably the parents, against a doctor or obstetrician for having to live a life full of suffering because of a handicap while the child was not supposed to have been born at all but is born anyway because of a negligent act by the doctor or assistant.
Are we really in a world in which a disabled child can sue the mother for failing to terminate its life in the womb to avoid all future suffering?
What evil mind conceived of this? What depravity in the heart of man can judge that one life is wrongful while another is right?
Or that suffering may not be beneficial?
We are confronted with a profoundly existential question: is it preferable – from the perspective of the child – not to have been born at all? If the claim of the child is to succeed it will require a court to evaluate the existence of the child against his or her non-existence and find that the latter is preferable.
Belgium’s euthanasia laws permit the killing of the disabled.
One wonders how they harmonise this with anti-discrimination legislation.
In English law, section 1 of the Congenital Disabilities (Civil Liability) Act 1976 does allow a prenatal harm claim for a child if it is born alive and disabled if the defendant was liable to either parent for the act which led to the disability. However, the wording of the Act specifically excludes natural handicaps, such as a genetic defect not detected because it was not properly tested for. The laws of the United Kingdom actively prohibit ‘wrongful life’ claims.
But we must wonder, through the EU’s ‘ever closer union’, and through issues of comparative law methodology and the use of the outcomes of that methodology when shaping the law through the European Court of Human Rights – how we may staunchly resist the inexorable ubiquity of such a depraved notion as ‘life unworthy of life’.
