Posted on 06/25/2007 10:46:32 PM PDT by monomaniac
A judge in New Zealand has ruled that pregnancy can be considered an "injury" in a case involving a failed attempt at sterilization.
Lawyer magazine reported that Justice Mallon surveyed various features and stages of pregnancy, including nausea and vomiting, stretch marks, increased heart rate, tiredness and cramps, and said that "if these kinds of changes and resulting effects were suffered by some other impact upon the body ... there would be little difficulty in calling them harm".
While pregnancy was a natural process, the physical impact of pregnancy was capable of being described as an injury, Justice Mallon found.
So let's get this straight: the mom asks to have a working part of her body disabled.
That is not considered an injury.
The doctor fails to render that working body part ineffective.
Then the woman, with a functional reproductive system, manages to produce what it should (under the right circumstances)..which is a baby.
But that natural, healthy process...is an injury
This also goes to show that even when you get sterilized, there is still a small possibility of pregnancy. If people only accepted that as a fact of life, the world would be a much happier place.
And the unborn child is technically a tumor too that will grow and grow until it pops out screaming. Next thing you know your life has changed forever.
> So let’s get this straight: the mom asks to have a working part of her body disabled...
You are possibly not aware of the context of “injury” in New Zealand: it is different to the way it is viewed in Canada.
You see, in New Zealand it is impossible to sue for personal injury: it is a legal concept not recognized by our courts. Instead, we have a socialized no-fault insurance scheme — the ACC or “Accident Compensation Commission — that attempts to ameliorate the effects of “injury” on the victim thru medical treatment, rehabilitation and sometimes financial compensation.
I haven’t read the details of this particular story, but what I suspect has happened is that the judge has been asked to decide whether a patient is entitled to assistance from ACC if a sterilization operation has not worked and as a result an unwanted pregnancy has occurred.
Seems fair enough to me: it could be that the woman sought sterilization because pregnancy could compromise her health. Dunno. And it could be that her health was compromised, requiring her to need additional medical aid. That is what ACC is for.
She can’t sue for personal injury in that case — the courts won’t hear it — so she reverts to our ACC system to help set things right. Fair enough, that is how our system works here. Quite different to the way it works in Canada and the US.
Like I said, I do not know the details of this case, and I am guessing that this is how it probably panned out.
Without this background information it is really easy to adopt a shrill viewpoint on New Zealand and how we treat pregnancy and abortion — particularly if you can develop a view that we treat pregnancy as an “injury” as a matter of course.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Pregnancy is generally viewed as a very natural process — so much so that delivery in NZ is not really viewed as a medical procedure requiring a doctor to be present. Most deliveries are carried out by midwives, and most mothers leave hospital within a few hours or at most a couple days of giving birth — unless there are true medical complications.
Post-natal care is made available to all mothers, usually in the form of a Plunkett Nurse who will make house calls from time-to-time.
Abortion, on the other hand, is generally frowned upon in New Zealand. It is certainly available, but it is not as open-slather as it is in the United States.
I believe that as a general rule it is available only with the permission of two doctors, one of which is an obstetrician or gynecologist, and it is usually accompanied by mandatory counseling. It is not a considered to be a Right. In many ways, that boils down to the dominant cultures here in NZ (Maori, Pacific Island, Pakeha) and the importance they place on Family.
(On the downside we have appalling child abuse stats — which give rise to the consideration that some childred never deserved the misery of being born into some families. And again, it does often come down to the dominant cultures here...)
And on reflection, I know of nobody in my immediate circle of friends and acquaintences who have had an abortion: most of the folk I know are delighted to give birth and have kids.
*DieHard*
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