A 20-year-old British woman successfully sued her mother’s doctor for allowing her to be born. Evie Toombes was born with spina bifida, a neural tube defect that can severely limit a person’s lifespan and require them to be hooked up to tubes sometimes 24 hours a day. She believed that her doctor could have done more to ensure she never came into this world, and a court agreed.
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- Toombes accused Dr. Philip Mitchell of failing to properly advise her mother. Toombes, an amateur showjumper from Skegness, sued Mitchell in November 2021 for “failing to prescribe vital supplements to her mother before she got pregnant.”
- Had Toombes’ mother been advised properly, she never would have been born. She claimed that if her mother knew that she needed to take folic acid supplements to reduce the risk of her baby being born with spina bifida, she would have postponed getting pregnant at that exact time and Toombes would never have been born.
- A judge agreed with her claim. “Had Evie’s mother been ‘provided with the correct recommended advice, she would have delayed attempts to conceive,” Judge Rosalind Coe QC said in the ruling. “In the circumstances, there would have been a later conception, which would have resulted in a normal healthy child.”
- Toombes could be entitled to millions in compensation. The “wrongful conception” damages have not yet been decided, but it’s believed that they could total millions of dollars as it would need to cover the huge costs of the lifetime worth of care needs she has and has had already.
- Despite her disability, she has made an incredible life for herself. Evie has nearly 28,000 Instagram followers and works as an amateur showjumper. She regularly shares her struggles with her chronic illness with her followers but manages to have an incredibly positive attitude despite her struggles.
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