A Spanish doctor was ordered to pay child support to a baby born after he bungled a woman’s abortion, a judge ruled this week in Palma, Spain.
The baby was born healthy after a full nine-month term despite the doctor’s performance of a surgical abortion to terminate the pregnancy, Spanish newspaper Diario de Mallorca reported Wednesday.
The boy is now 18 months old.
The mother, 24, didn’t find out the abortion had failed until three months later, at which point it was too late to repeat the procedure.
In the unprecedented case, Judge Francisco Perez ordered the gynecologist pay $1,300 a month until the child’s 26th birthday — plus another $189,000 for moral damages suffered by the young mother, Diario de Mallorca reports.
The woman’s lawyer, Eva Munar, said the ruling is fair for a case of medical negligence, according to The Guardian.
“There has never been a case like this before in Spain,” said Munar. “We don’t know if it has ever happened anywhere else in the world.”
According to the judge, the doctor’s mistake caused “irreversible” disruption and emotional damage to the woman, who expressed feelings of sadness and guilt, Diario de Mallorca reported.
The woman was seven weeks pregnant when she visited Emece clinic in Palma two years ago to terminate the pregnancy. When she returned to the clinic for a followup ultrasound two weeks later, the doctor who performed the abortion assured her the procedure had been successful, according to the account in the paper.
“The scan lasted three minutes and I was out again,” the mother said Thursday. “It was: ‘You are fine, off you go and carry on with your life as normal.’ ”
Three months later the woman went back to the clinic, thinking she must have become pregnant again, but a new ultrasound revealed that it was the same pregnancy.
At that point the woman was 22 weeks into the pregnancy, too far along to terminate it, the clinic told her.
The young mother told her parents about the pregnancy, which she had previously kept secret. She and her son now live with her parents.
“When I have to explain all this to him, I’ll try to make sure that he feels okay about it,” she said, according to The Guardian. “It was back then that he was not wanted, not now.”
The doctor and clinic are expected to appeal the decision, reports say.
He didn't make that baby! OK it's his fault! Make him pay but not every month! That's just wrong
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