Blue Like You

In a society that focuses more and more on the wants and needs of adults, I suppose it’s not surprising that we now have situations in Canada where women are suing for ‘wrongful birth’. Today’s National Post tells several stories of such women - Seeking solace in law when a baby is a burden.

In some cases, sterilization operations failed. In others, abortions failed and the family was left with the burden of raising a healthy, beautiful child.

In a recent New Brunswick decision, a woman was awarded $80,000 to cover costs of raising her child who was born due to a botched tubal ligation:

Much was her shock, then, when, barely a year later, she became pregnant. She eventually gave birth to a healthy baby girl. But just over a month ago, a judge ruled in favour of the lawsuit she had filed over the sterilization blunder, awarding the mother $80,000 in damages.

"Sometimes the birth of a child is not a blessing. It is often a burden," Madam Justice Paulette Garnett of the New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench wrote in her judgment.

"Medical science has made it possible for families to limit the number of children they have, and, in this country, the vast majority of them do … The fact that (she) now treasures her unplanned child is irrelevant. It is relevant that she has to feed, clothe and educate her."

Two questions here. One is addressed at the end of the article:

Merely calculating the impact of a child in purely financial terms could be problematic, suggests Duncan Embury, a Toronto malpractice lawyer.

"If the cost of raising a child constitutes damages, what if the child then goes on to become a professional athlete? … A child can be an economic advantage as well as disadvantage."

So, what happens if this New Brunswick child does end up being a huge economic advantage to her parents? Do they have to return the money?

This is what happens when we view children as commodities - providing either a net gain or a net loss to the couple’s bottom line.

How cold and unfeeling. Worse is the thought that this poor child could someday learn that not only was she unwanted, but that her mother actually went to court to sue for the burden that she represented.

What a selfish, self-centered society we’ve become.

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Update : Great letter in Wednesday’s National Post by Diane Wood of Newmarket:

Re: Seeking Solace In Law When Baby Is A Burden, May 17.

A child is the result of the love of a man and a woman, their love made flesh. Why would anyone consider a child to be a bad thing? My husband and I have had eight children, and we would gladly have more. We show our love for each other by having and raising our children; we have learned to be less selfish by learning to love our children and sacrifice for them. It’s not always easy, but we become better people by learning to accept the challenges life sends us.

One of our children died shortly after birth. Maybe I should have sued for I was very excited about that child, and it’s not fair that I do not have her. Any mature adult knows that life never goes the way we plan it. Yet we become mature and wise by learning to accept setbacks.

Rather than awarding damages to a mother after her "sterilization or abortion blunder," why not award the child to someone who would not consider he or she a burden?

Dianne Wood, Newmarket, Ont.

And that last sentence is exactly my point. Thank you for writing that letter, Diane.

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BTW, I hear that some folks are quite perturbed that I haven’t allowed every comment to be published. Well, you have every right to rant and rave about that on your own blogs.

And I have every right to decide which comments I allow.

Because, you see, its my blog .

Michael Coren exposes some of Ottawa’s juicier gossip in today’s Sun - More hypocrisy in politics.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t mention the latest ruckus which has been amply covered in today’s Post by Don Martin :

But the 55-year-old Mr. Toews’ public face of self-righteous morality is now clashing with his troubled private life. An MP dubbed the "minister of family values" by Liberals is embroiled in a messy divorce after fathering a child last fall with a much younger woman.

That’s his business, frankly , yet it might explain why Mr. Toews was demoted to the Treasury Board and immediately cloaked by invisibility, stewing in Question Period silence while his junior parliamentary secretary juggles tough questions on election financing irregularities.

Is it his business, Don? You’ve just made it the business of every Post reader in the world.

But Michael Coren has amply demonstrated that Toews isn’t the only one prone to the odd indiscretion:

…Just a few years ago it was widely known in Ottawa and media circles that a member of the Liberal government maintained a wife in one home and a gay lover in another. This certainly brought the man’s integrity into question. Because it was a secret arrangement it also exposed him to potential blackmail .

The story was never told due to a form of "gentleman’s agreement." It also was thought unfashionable and suburban within the achingly trendy journalistic class to write of someone’s homosexuality unless that person requested it. ..

So, how much lurid detail do we need to know about our elected officials’ private lives? They are human after all, and we all make mistakes. But should they be punished for behaviour that our society finds quite permissible in the mainstream? And how much privacy are they entitled to?

Perhaps we the Canadian public should insist on some kind of an Access to Tawdry Activity website where each MP’s sexual proclivities and/or transgressions against their partners can be publicly aired. Maybe we can also ask for a Gossip Input Section where any suspected activity and be posted and checked out by the appropriate morality police. Is this where we really want to go?

Personally, I think it’s unrealistic to expect our elected officials to live up to a higher standard of behaviour than our own.

I’d be happy if they if they simply raised their own standards up to the level of the current societal norm.

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Sunday Update : Joan Tintor - Short memories at the Globe . Via Jack’s Newswatch .

Monday Update : Talk about Bernier heats up, likely to be shuffled, Tories say - Hill Times.

A letter-writer in today’s National Post has the solution. This one’s a hoot!

I am so happy that Dalton McGuinty and George Smitherman have found a way to spend my Ontario Health Tax. I was always ticked off having to pay for my PSA test out of my own pocket, but after this announcement, I am now seriously considering the sex-change option.

Maybe this is Dalton’s solution for having changed Ontario from a "have" province to a "have-not" province. These guys are so special. They can have it both ways. Now so can I .

Warren (Wendy) Brown, Long Sault, Ont.

Absolutely brilliant!

Other good letters here and here .

As I said yesterday , the amount of money may not be huge, but the optics are terrible. Also, the number of applicants for this type of operation may increase dramatically, now that it is covered by OHIP.

And since the Lemmings of Ontario have seen fit to reward this Liberal Government with a majority, I see no hope on the immediate horizon for any common sense to prevail.