Could a Class Action Suit End Abortion?

[DL82]

With the likelihood of a pro-abortion President at this election, and recognising that neither candidate has a strong history or commitment to pro-life, it may be time to consider other means of ending abortion. (PLEASE, don’t derail this thread by discussing who’ll win the election or the candidates’ voting records, this is just context, ignore it if you disagree.)

Anyway, irrespective of that…

Class action law suits have been launched against tobacco and fast food companies based on the health consequences of their ‘product’ and the way that product is advertised and sold. Even if people freely ‘chose’ to smoke or eat unhealthy food, courts have been known to uphold the idea that they chose in ignorance, and find against them.

Could a class action suit be launched by women who were counselled to have abortions, against Planned Parenthood, or against particular abortion clinics, not for the rights of the unborn but for the psychological damage suffered by the women themselves? It is very rare that abortion clinics really explain the lifelong feelings of loss that often accompany abortion, and many women struggle for a long time to overcome these. Besides the emotional damage, there is also the damage that can be done to a woman’s uterus from abortion, particularly multiple abortions.

Such ‘damages’ could also (possibly) be widened to the loss of a child, understood as the loss of future financial and emotional support from a child, in the same way as medical negligence cases where a person dies unnecessarily.

American medical negligence payouts can be enormous, and the whole healthcare system is struggling at the moment, along with the rest of the economy. A multi-million (or multi-billion) dollar payout from Planned Parenthood would probably bankrupt the organisation.

Here in the UK, the German manufacturers of the morning-sickness drug Thalidomide were forced into a nearly bankrupting pay-out for all the children who were born with missing limbs as a result. Yet the medical profession are carrying out a procedure which was developed and honed in illegal back-street butchers for most of its’ history, which is one of the most violent forms of surgery imaginable, and they seem to escape any kind of scrutiny. Get any abortionist under oath and they will tell you the risks involved in the procedure. They’ll probably also be forced to reveal that the only reason they’re doing that job is because they can’t get any other medical appointment with their poor record and qualifications.

What do people think? Is this idea worth pursuing?

 

[IGCampbell]

Unfortunately, you’re not really talking about a class-action suit here. While you could file such a suit against a particular provider with enough complainants, it would likely be dismissed.

Beyond that, such a suit wouldn’t do anything directly to stop abortion. Best case scenario, it would raise practitioner’s malpractice insurance rates, until they institute a specific strategy to ensure informed consent of the possible psychological harms.

The latest study on post-abortion psychological issues has more or less said “just one isn’t as harmful as we thought” (I’d love to provide a citation but can’t find the study at the moment) so pro-choice folks will capitalize on that. The problem is, with so much back-and-forth, unless it can be shown that a person’s psychological damage was caused by the procedure and how it was handled, rather than their personal dynamic, a suit is unlikely to proceed successfully.

Since “the jury’s still out” so to speak, on psychological damage as the result of an abortion, likely the courts will allow medical establishments to decide themselves. We don’t have anything as cut-and-dried in these women as the physical abnormalities caused by Thalidomide. And I suppose as a general legal sidenote, lawsuits in the UK tend to go easier for the plaintiff than in the US, so I’m not sure you could expect a similar result here even if we had visible, tangible evidence of damage.

 

[Mark77]

We are way too gutless.

We should follow the tactics of the liberal ACLU and environmental wacko’s and file lawsuit after lawsuit, even if they are dismissed.

Eventually the cost and lost time that the Abortion providers (providers of “Little Murders” as Bishop Chaput says) would incur will make a difference.

It is really about the billions of $$$$$$$, not about “choice” or “reproductive rights” or “a woman’s privacy rights” or any other politically correct slogan the elite “brights” can come up with.

Immaculate Heart of Mary pray for us!

Mark

 

[IGCampbell]

Mark: there’s some merit to that idea, but we do need to think strategically here. It’s quite clear at this point that the public is sick to death of spurious lawsuits. Filing more and yet more would simply turn them further from our cause, and I’ve got to be honest, we need The People in this one. As horrific as abortion is to us, we do need to use tact and strategy in this fight.

Likely if we choose that route, legislation will be enacted limiting the lawsuit tactic in some fashion, or making it financially unviable for us.

 

[stbruno]

The problem with filing lawsuits, you need lots of money too.
That’s why we should support the Thomas More Foundation.

Its a prolife law society. thomasmoresociety.org/
You can check out the many appeals they have filed on behalf of Wisc.Pharmacists and in Illinois the Parental notification bill etc.

Very worthy organization working to protect the life of the unborn and those who support their protection.

 

[royal_archer]

The problem is that the victims of abortion the only people who can file a lawsuit on their behalf are parties to the murder. The possible exception would be the fathers who in many instances do not even know their children are being killed.

Another potential legal angle is that the murdered babies may be the only remaining evidence of statutory rape in the case of underage girls who have their babies killed.