Wednesday, September 12, 2007




Docs not required

to say abortion is killing,

top NJ court rules

by Kate Coscarelli - Wednesday September 12, 2007, 10:52 AM

The state's highest court ruled today doctors should not be required to tell a woman seeking an abortion the procedure would kill a human being.

The unanimous ruling is the latest in a long-running civil lawsuit a Somerset County woman filed claiming her doctor did not give her enough information when he told her to end her six-to seven-week pregnancy because it exacerbated a kidney disorder.

The 5-0 decision overturns an appeals court decision that said the case should got to a jury and reinstates a trial court decision throwing the case out.

A physician does have a duty to give a woman information about the medical risks of terminating a pregnancy, the court said. However, it found there is no requirement for a doctor to go any farther.

"We know of no common law duty requiring a physician to instruct the woman that the embryo is an "existing human being," and suggesting that an abortion is tantamount to murder ... There is no basis for this Court to create a new duty that has no broad support in either the medical community or society," wrote Justice Barry Albin.

In 1996, the then 29-year-old Rosa Acuna, a mother of two from South Bound Brook, went to the doctor with stomach pains. She learned she was pregnant and her physician, Sheldon Turkish, advised her to have an abortion because the pregnancy was complicating an existing kidney disorder.

Seven weeks after the abortion, she had to be hospitalized for bleeding. Nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick told her the doctor had "left parts of the baby inside of her." She sued on grounds that she agreed to the procedure based on false information, claiming she suffered emotional distress and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Acuna, a native of Puerto Rico who did not finish high school, claims she asked the doctor "whether the baby was already there." She claims he told her: "Don't be stupid, it's just some blood."

The doctor, whose practice is in Perth Amboy, has testified that he did not recall Acuna asking such a question but would have told her that a "seven-week pregnancy is not a living human being."

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