Stacy Dow, a 20-year-old Scottish woman, has planned a legal case against the NHS Trust she believes are at fault, Tayside University Hospitals, for the incomplete abortion of twins in 2001. Dow, who subsequently gave birth to a daughter Jayde, is suing the hospital for £250 000, for easing the ‘financial burden’ of bringing Jayde up.
“I have got a child now that I wasn’t planning to have and I believe the hospital should take some responsibility for that,” Dow said, adding that the hospital had not taken ‘reasonable care to establish that the termination had been successful’.
Impregnated at the age of 16 years, Dow underwent an abortion in 2001. At the time, she was six week pregnant with twins and the operation was carried out at Perth Royal Infirmary. Post operation, Dow was told that the abortion was successful and as a side effect of a contraceptive injection she was given, she would gain weight and have irregular menstrual cycles. Therefore, she attributed her weight gain to the side effect.
However, upon visiting her doctor later, Dow found that one of the two fetuses had not been terminated and was due in seven weeks. Due to the advanced pregnancy, it was not possible to carry out another abortion.
“I thought he (her doctor) meant I had fallen pregnant again, and I couldn’t believe it when I was told that it was one of the original pregnancies. When they told me it was 33 weeks, I was absolutely stunned. I didn’t know what to say or do. It was obviously too far on to do anything. I never even got scanned again. I had no idea if it was a boy or a girl. I had no option except to go through with the birth. I had never been given any warning that the termination might not work properly,” she said.
Jayde was born on August 30, 2001 through caesarean section at Perth Royal Infirmary. Motherhood put paid to Dow’s ambition of becoming a nurse, and her parents Douglas and Barbara faced financial problems in accommodating another family member. In fact, Douglas took up an additional job to support Jayde, whose biological father died two years ago.
“None of us would be without Jayde now but looking after her has been a financial struggle. It has totally changed my life and my parents’ lives. They had a duty to take reasonable care to establish that the termination had been successful. They ought to have known the contraceptive jab could have masked the symptoms of continuing pregnancy,” Dow said.
On being contacted, hospital authorities, while accepting their oversight, said, “As far as could be clinically determined the pregnancy had been terminated.” They added that the amount being asked for ‘excessive.
