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Nevada Court Clarifies Recovery in Wrongful Birth Claim

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Extract

On March 30, 1995, the Supreme Court of Nevada, in Greco v. United States, determined that medical professionals who fail to make a timely diagnosis of gross and disabling fetal defects, thereby denying a pregnant woman her right to terminate a pregnancy, had acted negligently, and a malpractice claim could be brought against them. The court supported the plaintiff's claim of “wrongful birth,” but determined that the disabled child born to the plaintiff has no personal cause of action for “wrongful life.”

Sundi Greco, the plaintiff, alleged that her doctors at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada failed to make a timely diagnosis of her son's physical defects and abnormalities before his birth. Their negligence denied her the opportunity to terminate her pregnancy, causing her damages attendant to the avoidable birth of a child with birth defects. On her child's behalf, Greco asserted that the physicians' negligence, and resultant denial of his mother's right to terminate the pregnancy, allowed him to be born into a “grossly abnormal life of pain and deprivation.”

Type
Recent Developments in Health Law
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1995

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References

Greco v. United States, No. 24587, 1995 Nev. LEXIS 33 (Nev. Mar. 30, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botkin, Jeffrey R. Mehlman, Maxwell J., “Wrongful Birth: Medical, Legal, and Philosophical Issues,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 22 (1994): At 21–22. “‘Wrongful birth’ is a controversial malpractice action which has arisen in the past two decades.... As of late 1993, twenty-three states and three federal courts have recognized a cause if action for wrongful birth.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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