By Liz Townsend
Humanity of Unborn Not Part of Informed Consent, Judge Rules
A New Jersey judge ruled in November that an abortionist is not required to tell a woman seeking an abortion that the unborn child is a human being. The case reached Judge Amy Chambers's court after an appeals court decision in 2002 allowed Rosa Acuna to sue for emotional distress caused by the abortionist's medical advice that her seven-week-old baby was "nothing but some blood."
"The law requires the doctor to explain the procedure, to explain the risks," Harold J. Cassidy, Acuna's attorney, told American Medical News. "She is entitled to be told of a risk of significant psychological harm that could be lasting."
Acuna had an abortion in 1996. According to the appeals court decision, abortionist Sheldon C. Turkish told her she was pregnant and that "[y]our kidneys are messing you up." Fearing that her condition was life-threatening but unsure about abortion, Acuna said in a deposition that she asked Turkish whether "the baby was already there. I just needed to know and I wanted to know if the baby was - - if there was a baby already in me."
Acuna said Turkish replied, "don't be stupid, it's only blood." Turkish testified that he didn't remember Acuna asking the question, "but acknowledged that if a patient had asked it, he would have answered that a 'seven-week pregnancy is not a living human being.'"
A trial court originally ruled in Turkish's favor, stating that a "fetus" is not a "constitutional person." However, the appeals court reversed that decision, ruling that a woman has the right to choose "not to terminate the pregnancy," and should therefore be given full information from the abortionist. "Based on the circumstances, background and beliefs of the mother," the appeals court stated, "inducing her to terminate a pregnancy, even at eight weeks, because of the physician's failure to obtain an informed consent may also result in severe distress and mental anguish."
However, Judge Chambers decided that the humanity of the baby did not fall under medical advice, and therefore should not be considered a necessary part of informed consent before abortion, according to American Medical News. "When plaintiff insists that the doctor should have told her that she would be terminating the life of a living human being, she is asking for more than impartial medical information," Chambers wrote.
Cassidy has filed a motion asking Chambers to reconsider the case, according to American Medical News.
Finkel Sentenced to 34 Years in Prison
An Arizona judge sentenced abortionist Brian Finkel to over 34 years in prison for sexually abusing patients at his Phoenix abortion clinic. Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Cates announced the sentence January 2, one month after a jury convicted Finkel on 22 counts of abuse, according to the Associated Press (AP).
If Finkel, 55, serves out his sentence, he will be placed on lifetime probation and will have to register as a sex offender, the Arizona Republic reported.
Prosecutors credited the 32 women who testified at the trial with bravery for providing the evidence needed to convict Finkel. "These women deserve a lot of credit for courageously coming forward," Barnett Lotstein, a Maricopa County special assistant attorney, told the AP.
Finkel continues to insist that the woman misconstrued his actions, which included allegations that he fondled the patients' genitals and breasts during abortions and gynecological exams. The patients "mistook his good intentions for malevolent ones," Finkel said in court, according to the AP. "I'm sorry if I hurt their feelings. ... I know I'm not Marcus Welby."
Richard Gierloff, Finkel's attorney, told the AP he would appeal the verdict.
Australian Man to Go to Jail for Killing Unborn Baby
A man who stomped on his pregnant girlfriend's stomach and killed their unborn baby will go to jail for 25 years for assaulting the mother. The 24-week-old unborn baby was stillborn after the attack, but Australian law does not allow the father to be charged with murder.
Kylie Flick told Phillip King she was pregnant on April 18, 2002. Flick refused to have an abortion, so King offered two people $500 to beat her up and kill the baby, according to The Australian. King told them, "I don't care about the consequences - - I would rather go to jail than have a kid," the newspaper reported.
King killed the baby himself August 20, when he kicked and stomped Flick's abdomen about six times, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
He originally faced only a five-year term for "procuring a miscarriage" after a judge ruled that King could not even be charged with inflicting bodily harm on the baby's mother, since she was not seriously injured in the attack. Judge Robyn Tupman said Flick only experienced "some soreness," and that the death of the baby was not an issue, since the baby can only be considered a person once he takes a breath. "At common law, a foetus cannot be a victim of a crime of violence," Tupman stated, according to The Australian.
However, the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned Tupman's decision, ruling that the unborn baby should be considered as "connected tissue" to the mother, and therefore an attack on the baby is also an attack on the mother. "The close physical bond between the mother and the foetus is of such a character that for the purposes of offences such as these, the foetus should be regarded as part of the mother," Chief Justice James Spigelman wrote, according to the Herald.
New South Wales Attorney General Bob Debus told the Herald that he hopes to introduce legislation before Parliament to "make killing an unborn child an offence."
Woman Charged with Killing Mother and Unborn Baby
In a gruesome case that has garnered worldwide attention, Oklahoma officials charged Effie Goodson, 37, with kidnapping and killing a 21-year-old woman and cutting her six-month-old unborn baby out of her womb. Goodson then brought the dead baby to a hospital, claiming to be the mother, according to Tulsa World.
Goodson will be tried on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of kidnapping for the deaths of Carolyn Denise Simpson and her baby. Oklahoma allows an unborn baby to be considered a second victim of a crime after viability, which state law considers to be after the 24th week. Simpson's unborn baby was 25 weeks old.
Goodson had been telling people that she was pregnant for about 10 months, according to the Associated Press (AP). She was given a baby shower, and the claim of pregnancy complicated a workers' compensation case in which she was involved. However, other records showed that she had a hysterectomy in the 1980s, the AP reported.
Goodson's claims unraveled after Simpson was reported missing December 22. Simpson worked in a Creek nation casino in Okemah, Oklahoma, and Goodson met her there, investigators alleged. Goodson could be seen in a surveillance video with Simpson the night she disappeared, according to Tulsa World.
At about 4:30 a.m. December 23, Goodson arrived with the dead baby at Holdenville General Hospital. She told her husband she gave birth to the stillborn baby on the side of a rural road, Tulsa World reported.
Doctors quickly determined that Goodson had not given birth to the baby. A deer hunter found Simpson's body, with a .22-caliber bullet hole in her head and her abdomen crudely cut open, in a field near Lamar December 26, according to Tulsa World.
Goodson has entered a plea of not guilty, and a preliminary hearing has been set for January 27.
European Court Asked to Hear Case on Humanity of Unborn
A woman whose unborn baby was aborted when a French doctor mistook her for another patient has brought her case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Thi-Nho Vo's lawyer argued December 10 that the court should overturn French officials' "refusal to classify as involuntary homicide the attack on the life of the unborn child she was carrying," according to Agence France-Presse.
Vo is asking the European court to include her unborn baby under the definition of "person" in article two of the European Convention on Human Rights that guarantees "the right to life of any person," Agence France-Presse reported.
The European court is expected to rule within the next few weeks whether Vo's case is legally admissible, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
"I will be asking the court to recognise reality - - that is to say, human life begins at the moment of conception," Vo's lawyer, Bruno Le Griel, told the London Times. "Who would dare tell my client to her face that what she lost as a result of a mistake in the hospital was nothing more than a cluster of cells and was not her child?"
On November 21, 1991, Vo went to the Hotel-Dieu hospital in Lyons, France, for a routine prenatal checkup of her six-month-old unborn baby. On that same day, another woman with the same last name, Thanh Van Vo, was scheduled to have an intrauterine birth control device removed, according to the AP.
Dr. Francois Golfier mixed up the patients and began the surgical procedure to remove the device from the pregnant Thi-Nho Vo instead. Golfier punctured the amniotic sac, which led to an emergency abortion, the Times reported.
Golfier was charged with unintentional homicide (the French equivalent of involuntary homicide) but was later acquitted in a French court. After an appeal, he was convicted of the charge and sentenced to six months in prison and a fine.
However, France's highest court overturned the conviction in 1999. The Court of Cassation ruled that the "facts of the case did not constitute the offense of involuntary homicide" and "thus refused to consider the fetus as a human being entitled to the protection of the criminal law," according to Agence France-Presse.
Pro-abortion groups denounced Vo's case, predicting that if the court allows Golfier to be prosecuted for harming her baby it could change "the whole legal system," Anne Weyman of the British Family Planning Association told the AP. "Obviously the doctor did something he shouldn't have done and this should not have happened, but there are remedies around professional practice or negligence which need to be applied."
Pro-life groups, on the other hand, welcomed this opportunity to show the court that an unborn baby is truly a human being and should be protected in law.
"This is a landmark case," said Nuala Scarisbrick, trustee of the British pro-life charity LIFE. "If the judges follow common sense and the evidence of their eyes they will say, 'of course that baby was a real, living human being.' Human life begins at fertilisation. Deny that and you simply fly in the face of the modern sciences of genetics and embryology."