Tokyo - A Japanese woman has sued a hospital that implanted the wrong fertilised egg in her womb leading her to abort the foetus, in the country's first reported case of its kind, the hospital said Friday.
The woman, in her 20s, aborted the foetus in the ninth week after the hospital told her that a doctor had likely made a mistake and implanted an egg believed to have come from another woman aged in her 40s.
She has filed a lawsuit demanding ¥20 million yen (R2.13 million) in damages from the Kagawa Prefecture in southwestern Japan that runs the hospital over the blunder.
"I can't make up for what I did," 61-year-old obstetrician Kiyoya Kawada from Kagawa Prefecture Central Hospital told public broadcaster NHK. "She finally became pregnant but I made a mistake and I'm terribly sorry."
When the bad news broke, "the woman was dumb-struck" and the husband angrily blamed the hospital, head of gynaecology Masaru Yonezawa told reporters.
But the gynaecologist added: "We don't think we inflicted terrible damage on her, physically speaking." - AFP