Mother wins £9m to care for son she would have aborted

A MOTHER has been awarded £9million in damages to raise a son she says she would have aborted if she had known he was a haemophilia sufferer.

Omodele Meadows learned soon after Adejuwon’s birth in 2011 that he had the condition, which affects the blood’s ability to clot. His disorder is severe.

Adejuwon, six, was also diagnosed in 2015 with autism. He does not understand he needs haemophilia treatment, will not say when he has a bleed, and is unlikely to ever live independently.

The case was brought against Dr Hafshah Khan, a GP in south London, after a consultation in 2006. Ms Meadows, 40, had asked for blood tests after a nephew was diagnosed with haemophilia.

‘Saying she would have aborted the pregnancy is not the same at all as saying Adejuwon is unwanted’

Another GP arranged the tests and Dr Khan gave her the results.

The tests could establish whether a patient had haemophilia but not whether Ms Meadows was a carrier of a gene that causes it, the court heard.

Ms Meadows was told her results were normal. And as a result of advice at that consultation and the earlier one, she was led to believe that any child of hers would not have haemophilia.

Mrs Justice Yip said in her judgment at the High Court in London that if Ms Meadows had been referred for genetic testing in 2006, she would have known she was a carrier. Fetal testing would then have revealed the condition.

But the judge said Ms Meadows’s love for her son “shone through”. Her statement that she would have aborted the pregnancy had she known about the haemophilia was “not the same at all as saying that Adejuwon is now an unwanted child”.