Comparing tort laws

This chapter examines the legal landscape of birth-related torts with a focus on wrongful life, wrongful birth, and wrongful pregnancy. It contrasts the rationales of leading cases in different countries, which establish or reject the tort of wrongful life, either allowing parents and a child to seek tort or contractual damages for medical negligence or responding negatively to their claims. The chapter discusses conventional methods of comparative tort law converging towards the doctrine of causation and then presents critical approaches including feminist, critical race, and disability theories of tort law. It analyses cases, for example, in France, Germany, Rwanda, and South Africa, to illustrate the political spectrum of legal rules and the non-legal layers including societal and ideological factors that shape birth-related torts. As a result, a political and contextual understanding of these litigations highlights the potential for transformative legal approaches to birth-related torts.