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Texas Wrongful Birth - Dortha Biggs and Lesli Jacobs

Dortha Biggs, left, and Tom Biggs, right, touch the face of Dortha's daughter Lesli Jacobs, 48, center, who is deaf and blind, as they sit together outside at the Bethesda Lutheran Community Life Center in Houston, Texas on Monday, March 20, 2017. Touch is Lesli's only form of communication with the outside world. Dortha Biggs was stricken with but not diagnosed as having the disease Rubella during her daughter's pregnancy in 1968 through her birth in 1969. The complications in pregnancy led to her daughter Lesli Jacobs being born severely disabled. Lesli, now 48, lives with cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, and severe mental impairment. Lesli has undergone an extensive number of surgeries and requires 24-hour care at the group home where she has lived for more than 20 years. Her mother Dortha has said that if she had been diagnosed correctly as having Rubella by her doctor at the time, she would have aborted the pregnancy, knowing the sort of life her daughter would likely have led. Dortha won a Texas Supreme Court case in 1975 in which she and her then husband accused their doctor of failing to properly diagnose her Rubella during pregnancy. A current bill before the Texas legislature would ban lawsuits from parents suing their doctors if their child is born with a disability.

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Dortha Biggs, left, and Tom Biggs, right, touch the face of Dortha's daughter Lesli Jacobs, 48, center, who is deaf and blind, as they sit together outside at the Bethesda Lutheran Community Life Center in Houston, Texas on Monday, March 20, 2017. Touch is Lesli's only form of communication with the outside world. Dortha Biggs was stricken with but not diagnosed as having the disease Rubella during her daughter's pregnancy in 1968 through her birth in 1969. The complications in pregnancy led to her daughter Lesli Jacobs being born severely disabled. Lesli, now 48, lives with cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, and severe mental impairment. Lesli has undergone an extensive number of surgeries and requires 24-hour care at the group home where she has lived for more than 20 years. Her mother Dortha has said that if she had been diagnosed correctly as having Rubella by her doctor at the time, she would have aborted the pregnancy, knowing the sort of life her daughter would likely have led. Dortha won a Texas Supreme Court case in 1975 in which she and her then husband accused their doctor of failing to properly diagnose her Rubella during pregnancy. A current bill before the Texas legislature would ban lawsuits from parents suing their doctors if their child is born with a disability.