Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 19:26:16 -0400

From: Jennifer K Bankier

Subject: Rees v Darlington, cont

Forgive me for my late entry to this discussion but I have been away since Nov. 28 (and my email overloaded with spam while I was away, so I have lost any comments after Dec. 1), so my apologies if my comments are redundant but ...

A part of Lizzie Cooke's comment about her blood boiling below made my blood boil ... specifically the part where she characterizes her comment (and presumably, therefore her position) as a "ridiculously female and irrational comment."

I assume that the "irrational part" is sarcastic. That is not the problem for me. I assume Prof. Cooke's characterization of her position as female was meant more seriously, in contrast to the characterization of those who believe compensation for the costs of raising a child as a result of a bungled sterilization as "chaps" ... in other words there is an implication that women are more likely to agree with Prof. Cooke's position that "it is WRONG regard [sic] the birth of a child as something for which anyone should be compensated."

I am a woman and I emphatically believe that parents who receive a child as a result of a bungled sterilization *should* be compensated.

I speak as a woman who decided at an early age, emphatically, that I did not want to have children not only for career reasons but because I do *not* enjoy children, and I consider the work involved in raising them to be extremely burdensome, and not work I want to undertake.

I was myself sterilized almost 30 years ago for this reason, and giving birth to a child if this sterilization had been botched would have had an extremely negative impact on my life, for non-monetary reasons.

Child-care is *not* a positive experience for everyone, and *not* everyone is good at it. The notion that once a woman gives birth she will immediately love the child and be a good parent is nonsense ... as anyone who reads the papers should be able to recognize. The same is true for fathers.

The assumption so far in this discussion is that the non-momentary consequences of childbirth are always positive for everyone. In some cases the non-monetary consequences may be extremely negative ... if we're going to get into non-tangibles as a mitigating factor against awards for monetary losses, does that mean that parents in such cases should be able to claim for non-monetary negative consequences, e.g. distress, feeling harassed and burdened, the "double shift" for women, etc.?

Furthermore, some people decide not to have children precisely because they *cannot* afford to have them (an accurate assumption for some people) and such people should be able to claim the additional expenses resulting from a bungled sterilization including the costs of rearing a child.

The problem here is over-generalization ... people who do experience significant, positive non-monetary benefits from children generalizing to an assumption that such positive benefits exist for all people who experience an unwanted pregnancy as a result of a bungled sterilization. This is an unfair universalization of the experience of *some*, not *all* people, including *some*, not *all* women.

JKB

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Lizzie Cooke wrote:

Come off it, chaps - there has to be some room in this discussion for the fact that children are not gladioli - I thought that at least part of the thinking behind the failed sterilisation cases was that in a deep and gutsy and human and nothing-to-do-with-contract sense it is WRONG regard the birth of a child as something for which anyone should be compensated. It makes my blood boil, at any rate.

I apologise for this ridiculously female and irrational comment.

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