Abstract

KIE: The New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, affirmed the dismissal of a malpractice action brought under "wrongful life" theory by a brain-damaged, multiply-handicapped 19-year-old. The defendant physician had refused to provide the plaintiff's mother with the treatment option of a therapeutic abortion because her health was threatened by a complicated pregnancy in 1971. However, the decision not to abort occurred prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, when New Jersey did not allow abortions directed solely to eliminate a potentially defective fetus. At that time, the only legal duty was to the mother, to perform a therapeutic abortion if her health or life was endangered and no injury to the mother was claimed. The physician had no duty to advise, arrange for, or perform a eugenic abortion on a viable and probably handicapped fetus.