Unborn baby’s estate, mother win settlement against abortionist

Southwestern Women’s Options, an Albuquerque abortion clinic, and its co-defendants agreed to a $200,000 settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit brought by a mother and the estate of her unborn child, who was aborted without his mother’s informed consent. 

“You can collect for the death of the unborn baby as a person, but you can still murder the unborn baby under New Mexico law,” said Mike Seibel, an Albuquerque attorney for the mother and her child. 

The order, signed by Judge Erin B. O’Connell of Bernalillo County’s Second Judicial District Court, enters a final settlement in favor of the plaintiff and against all four defendants for $200,000, including attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses. The settlement contains no findings of fact and no admission of liability, and once the sum is paid, all claims are resolved and cannot be relitigated.

The defendants in the case were the late-term abortionists Drs. Curtis W. Boyd, Emily Cohen, the late Carmen Landau, and Southwestern Women’s Options, the abortion clinic that they run. The pro-life site Live Action News reported Sept. 24 that it obtained the filings through a public-records request.

The complaint, filed Dec. 5, 2023, alleged that the mother went to the clinic on or about Dec. 8, 2020, for a 26-week abortion while she was an active methamphetamine user and intoxicated, and that the defendants knew or should have known that from her medical file. 

The case hinged upon whether the mother could legally give informed consent, given that she was intoxicated. The complaint also says that the clinic failed to counsel her or refer her to the state Children, Youth and Families Department about her options. 

The lawsuit also says that the clinic offered to transfer the child’s remains to a funeral home for services but instead allegedly placed them in a medical waste container and destroyed them.

The suit’s 10 counts included medical negligence, lack of informed consent, unfair trade practices, mishandling of remains, and wrongful death. The wrongful death count rested on the consent claim: It said the child was a person under the state’s Wrongful Death Statute and would be alive but for the defendants’ negligence in securing informed consent. 

The suit sought unspecified damages, including punitive damages, and an order barring the clinic from limiting its liability in advance as its informed consent forms had attempted to do.

Attorneys at Resnick & Louis approved the settlement, on behalf of the clinic and its doctors. Because the case settled, no court tested the allegations, and no statement from the defendants or their attorneys has been published.

New Mexico’s wrongful death statute allows suit when a person’s death is caused by another’s “wrongful act, neglect or default,” and requires that the action be brought by the deceased’s personal representative. In Salazar, a 1980 case in which a mother sued a hospital over care that preceded a stillbirth at more than 30 weeks, the New Mexico Court of Appeals held that “the legislature of 1882 intended to provide a right of recovery for the wrongful death of a viable fetus.” That case did not involve an abortion. The settlement order does not decide the claims, and a trial-court order is not binding precedent.

Seibel told Live Action News that he believed it was the first time an abortion provider has been sued for the wrongful death of an unborn baby.