French Woman Sues for Unborn Child's Right to Life

by Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
December 11, 2003

Brussels, Belgium (LifeNews.com) -- After a doctor's mistake caused the death of her unborn child, a French woman is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights following the French Court's ruling that the child had no right to life. If the European court overrules the French judiciary, the ruling could affect the entire continent.

In 1991 Thi-Nho Vo went to the Hotel-Dieu hospital Lyon, France, for a routine prenatal exam when she was six months pregnant. Her records became mixed up with a patient with a similar name, who was schedule to have an intrauterine device removed. While attempting to perform the procedure on Thi-Nho Vo, doctors ruptured her amniotic sac and were forced to perform an emergency abortion.

After over a decade of seeking restitution, Vo is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights after the French government's refusal to acknowledge “the attack on the life of the unborn child she was carrying” a homicide.

She contends that France has an obligation to make such an act a criminal offense, based on Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantees the right to life.

Bruno Le Griel, Vo's attorney, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he wanted the court to establish that “the human life, a human being, begins at the moment of conception.”

“This is a landmark case,” said Nuala Scarisbrick, a trustee of LIFE, Britain's largest pro-life group. “If the EU judges follow common sense and the evidence … that will be a legal earthquake -- here in the UK, across Europe and eventually across the world – which  will destroy abortion.”

“If they say ‘No, that child was not really a human being,’ they will look as misguided (and worse) as those who supported the Atlantic Slave Trade or South African apartheid and said that black people were not really human beings,” added Scarisbrick.

Pro-abortion groups are opposing Vo, acknowledging that a ruling granting a right to life to the unborn could invalidate laws in countries such as Britain, where a right to life is not protected until birth.

“I think what happened to her was a very tragic case, but you cannot make law on the basis of a tragic case,” said Anne Weyman, chief executive of the Family Planning Association in Britain.

“Obviously the doctor did something he shouldn't have done, and this should not have happened, but there are remedies around professional practice or negligence which need to be applied. It's not a reason for changing the whole legal system,” Weyman concluded.

Criminal charges were immediately filed against the doctor after the incident, who was initially charged with unintentional injury. The charge was later changed to unintentional homicide. After four years the doctor was acquitted, but convicted after an appeal the following year. He was suspended for six months and fined FF 10,000 (approximately $1,500 US)

Another appeal in 1999 reversed the conviction, declaring that the "facts of the case did not constitute the offense of involuntary homicide" and "thus refused to consider the fetus as a human being entitled to the protection of the criminal law."