I missed this yesterday. We’ve written about Barbara Farlow’s struggle for her daughter Annie before. Here’s another item:
Judge Thea Herman is to decide on a request by Sick Kids and two defendant doctors to elevate the case to Ontario Superior Court, with its stricter procedural safeguards and rules of evidence.
If Mrs. Farlow wins, the case will proceed as a “small claim,” and two doctors at Canada’s top pediatric hospital will not only have to defend against allegations they deliberately killed a baby because she had a fatal genetic abnormality, but they will do so in a forum designed for minor disputes over unpaid bills, encroaching fences and overhanging trees.
But if she loses and the case is moved up, it will mark the likely end of an epic legal battle for understanding and closure — in the offices of the Chief Coroner, the Privacy Commissioner, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, even a Catholic archbishop — that has turned Mrs. Farlow, a former automotive engineer and mother of nine, into a powerhouse patients’ rights activist, with supporters across North America.
The article says a decision was expected yesterday, but I have not heard what that decision was. I’ll post it when I find out.
by 
Here you go:
http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=1723956
They may go to superior court yet, but the Farlows are satisfied that Sick Kids has changed the way they handle fatal genetic anomalies. Which is, after all, what they were after in the first place.
Thanks for covering the story, Andrea.
I would like to provide more details. The grand rounds speaker at Sickkids was Amy Kuebelbec. She is well known throughout the US (and an author, with another book about to be published) on the topic of perinatal palliative care.
When women are having babies who are diagnosed to have life-limiting conditions, the only choice should NOT be termination. It is a difficult journey awaiting the birth of a child whose life span is uncertain (and that is putting it mildly) and at the time I had my daughter, the choice was termination with an abundance of support or “good-bye, see you later”.
If a woman “does her civic duty” and terminates, then there is a package, complete with hand knit bonnets and booties, a swaddling blanket, footprints , handprints, and pictures etc are done. There is psychological counseling.
As I understand it, the unborn baby receives an injection of KCL to stop the heart, and it is then delivered dead, and they dress it up and take pictures.
The situation in London St. Joes, as the story goes, is that they don’t inject the KCL, but let the baby sputter and gasp to a natural death.
Amy gave a wonderful talk and she emphasized that the choice NOT to terminate was not one made only by religious people by any means. The talk concluded with a very touching slide show of her own baby’s short life.
I was very impressed to see the Chief of Peds and two VPs in the grand rounds. I would not have thought it was a topic that would typically be of interest. After the talk, one of the VPs whom we had come to know well, approached me and we had a few words and then she hugged me.
Although I think it is wonderful to encourage bringing babies with life-limiting conditions to term (mothers learn that the short life has as much impact on their lives as their other children; it is truly profound) that does not mean that some of these babies do not benefit from life saving care or treatment. Yes, they are limited, but they are happy and cared for.
In our own circumstance, our daughter was mildly afflicted. She was very rare indeed. She could see and hear and did not suffer from the serious and common brain defects. To this day, we do not know how or why she died. She would not have learned to walk until she was 4, and she likely would never have lived past 10 but that was her life and we believed that we had an obligation not to deny her treatment because of her limitations.
A professor in Alberta started a facebook group called, “Justice for Annie”.
It is at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76792569122&ref=ts
We l hope that the hospital agrees with our idea so that we can shake hands and be finished with this matter. Mistakes happen, assumptions (such as who wants a disabled child?) are made. What is important is sincere change and forgiveness. That is the best we can hope for.
Barb