The "Perruche law"” “

No one can claim compensation for the mere fact of having been born, nor can life itself be considered detrimental. That is the gist of a bill voted almost unanimously by the national Assembly on 10 January. The story began on 17 November 2000 when France’s Supreme Court recognized the right of Nicolas Perruche, born handicapped, “to benefit from a compensation for the detriment caused to him by his handicap, so as to permit him to live in conditions conforming to human dignity”. Life itself was thus recognized as “detrimental” for a disabled person. “No compensation for having been born”. The new bill affirms, on the contrary, that “no one may demand an indemnity for the mere fact of having been born”. The right to such compensation is only granted if “the handicap was the direct consequence of an error”. According to the law, the medical error, that gives a right to claim compensation for a disabled child, shall be limited “to the mistaken act that caused the handicap, aggravated it or prevented measures being taken to mitigate it”. In the case “of a child born with a handicap of particular gravity, not discovered during the mother’s pregnancy as a result of a serious error [in diagnosis], the parents may, therefore, ask the health service or physician responsible for compensation on behalf of their handicapped child, proportioned to the particular expenses incurred by that child’s handicap in life”. However, the provision is a partial one. The new bill does not in fact resolve the questions posed by pre-natal diagnosticians worried about their work and preserves the discrimination between parents who present a suit for compensation and those who abstain from doing so and between those handicapped who might be diagnosed before their birth and those who cannot be so diagnosed The reactions of the Churches: an absurd situation. Msgr. Philippe Barbarin, bishop of Moulins and chairman of the episcopal Committee for health has stressed the absurdity of the situation: “only the parents who publicly declare their displeasure about having given birth to their child – he says – will have a right to compensation”. For his part, Msgr. André Vingt-Trois, archbishop of Tours and president of the episcopal Commission for the Family, wonders whether “the law will authorize the compensation of families on the basis of the hypothetical choice of a medical abortion and whether we will have the courage to devote ourselves to a policy of solidarity with the disabled, with all the fiscal burdens that derive from it”. “The whole debate – he concludes – is limited by the assumption of the legitimacy of recourse to abortion on medical advice. So long as abortion is considered a taboo question, the debate will not find its rightful dimension”. The “Perruche” case, according to the Federation of Evangelical Baptist Churches and the Union of Free Evangelical Churches, “opens the way to dangerous consequences: the growth of litigation, harm to prenatal medicine with the consequent increase in insurance premiums and the pressure on doctors to opt for abortion, as a precaution”. That is why the Evangelical Churches are urging that “the problem of congenital handicap be posed in terms of social assistance and solidarity, and not of error, and that a juridical statute be created to protect the child about to be born”. After “Perruche”, it’s now the time of bioethics. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is due to be debated on 22 January before returning to the Assembly for the final vote on 30 January. But the legislative activity is not exhausted with the Perruche affaire. For discussion on the bill on bioethics began in Parliament on 15 January. Also on the parliamentary agenda is the prohibition of human cloning and the easing of restrictions on organ donations. The question of scientific research on human embryos is also to be debated; according to the new bill, such research will only be possible on frozen embryos ‘surplus to requirements’, i.e. superfluous to the in vitro fertilization plans for which they were ‘produced’. The new law also proposes amendments to the existing legislation on organ donations and introduces the principle of “silence-equals-assent” to such donation.