British Woman Compensated for Abortion Done Without Her Consent 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 30, 2007
Essex, England (LifeNews.com) — A British woman has been awarded more than $55,000 after a hospital did an abortion her and killed her unborn child without her consent. Teresa Cooper, a 40 year-old mother of three, went to Princess Alexandra hospital in Harlow when she worried that antibiotics she took to combat an E.coli infection could have hurt her baby.
According to the lawsuit she filed against the hospital, Copper said doctors there failed to give her information on the health of her baby before doing the abortion.
Cooper signed an informed consent form for the abortion but two days later watched a pro-life video that changed her mind about going through with it.
When she finally arrived at the hospital for the scheduled abortion, Cooper said she only wanted to have it if doctors determined the drugs she took for the infection had damaged her baby.
Instead, she was taken immediately into surgery and the abortion was done, killing the baby.
Princess Alexandra hospital admitted after the suit was filed that it erred and did the abortion without giving Cooper an adequate chance of considering all her options and without all the information she requested. It settled with Cooper out of court and awarded her the monetary damages.
Cooper talked about the experience with the London Daily Mail newspaper and said the situation had "opened all the wounds of my childhood."
She said her father was an alcoholic and her mother suffered from mental health issues and that she was sexually abused in the British childcare system.
"When you’ve gone through the care system and the only thing you’ve ever been good at is having your children and someone takes that away from you, that is really bad for someone like me," Cooper told the Daily Mail.
Cooper’s attorney David Kerry also spoke to the newspaper about the case.
"Teresa wanted answers to her concerns about her own health and that of her baby. It was as if she was on a conveyor belt which was impossible to stop," he said.
"Despite her obvious distress she was not respected as an individual, with the tragic result that she lost her baby totally unnecessarily," he added.
The newspaper reported that a representative of the hospital apologized for Cooper’s shoddy treatment and that the hospital is training its staff to make sure Cooper’s situation isn’t repeated.
