L'arrêt Perruche. Les problèmes posés par la biologie au droit

Nicolas Perruche was born handicapped because his mother had German measles during her pregnancy. Two questions were then raised in the French courts: first, the mother’s rights because, since she was not informed about her infection, she was not able to exercise her right to an abortion; the child’s rights to claim damages for the wrong he suffered at birth.
While the mother’s rights were acknowledged without controversy, the child’s rights to damages raise formidable problems: the issue of medical power (or the risk of preventative eugenics), the issue of the mother’s right (or obligation) to have an abortion, and also the issue of using the law as an instrument of standardization.
The recognition of the child’s right to be compensated for having to live, admittedly with a handicap, raises a range of questions: that of “normality” and hence of eugenics; but above all that of the courts’ rights to make decisions regulating living organisms. With reference to the Perruche judgement, Nathanaël Majster raises, in addition to the ethical questions, the issue of the legitimacy and the limits of legal powers when faced with the new challenges raised by advances in life sciences.