By ED WHITE
The Associated Press
DETROIT — A Michigan County is fighting a judge’s ruling that jail officers can be sued for violating a girl’s constitutional rights by not getting her mother to a hospital for her birth.
Chelsie Barker, 10, needs round-the-clock attention as a result of a lack of oxygen during birth in the Wayne County jail, a lawyer for her guardian said Thursday.
“She has brain damage,” Rebecca Walsh said. “She walks with a walker. As a 10-year-old, she can write a few scribbles but can’t write her name. She will never be employable. She will need care 24 hours a day for her life.”
The county had sought to dismiss the lawsuit in federal court, saying that under the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade, the jail officers were not liable because the child had no 14th Amendment right before she was born.
In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court said a fetus is not a person under the 14th Amendment, which provides that the government shall not deprive any person of life or liberty without due process.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy III on Jan. 22 rejected the county’s argument, writing that because the girl’s mother was in jail, county officers “had a duty to protect and care for Chelsie.”
Murphy said the injuries sustained by the girl at birth were “continuous” and that “there is no principled reason to distinguish those injuries sustained before the birth from those sustained after the birth.”
The jail officers “had sufficient warning that the child was on the way and did not get her the medical care she needed immediately prior to, during, and after the birth,” he said.
Chantrienes Barker, now in state prison, gave birth to Chelsie on Dec. 3, 1998, at the jail, hours after she was discharged from Hutzel Hospital. The lawsuit claims that no one checked on her at the jail for more than two hours.
The suit says Chelsie was not breathing, but paramedics summoned to the jail did not have equipment to resuscitate her. The baby was taken to a hospital.
County lawyer Karie Boylan declined comment because of the ongoing litigation. An appeal of Murphy’s ruling is planned.
Walsh also has another suit pending in Wayne County Circuit Court, alleging violations of Michigan law related to Chelsie’s birth.