About three-quarters of the states in this country recognize "wrongful pregnancy," also known as "wrongful conception," in which damages can be recovered for use of faulty contraception or a failed sterilization. But recoverable damages in such cases vary from state to state.

The most common allowable damages in wrongful pregnancy cases cover the expense of the pregnancy and childbirth, which can also include related costs such as mental or physical injury and loss of wages. A much smaller fraction of the states that recognize wrongful pregnancy permit for damages that include the cost of rearing the child, but this is offset by what the courts deem as the value of having a healthy child.

Only a few states allow for the full damage rule in wrongful pregnancy cases, which says that all damages caused by the injurious act are recoverable, including the cost of raising and educating a child without being offset by the emotional benefits of having a healthy child.

Recovering the cost of an abortion, however, is generally not sought in a wrongful pregnancy suit because the expense of going to trial would exceed that of the procedure. And in "wrongful birth" cases -- in which medical professionals failed to detect or tell the patient that the fetus showed some kind of anomaly that led to a birth defect -- liability would fall to the physician or hospital but almost certainly not to the distributor of the negligent birth control.

Legal experts also pointed out that the right for women to bring wrongful pregnancy lawsuits is still in its relative infancy, so to speak, going back only a few decades. And the majority of these cases have been due to failed sterilization procedures, such as a tubal ligation that afterward still led to pregnancy.

It once was the case -- and still is in about a quarter of the states -- that the emotional and spiritual benefits of having a child trumped any negligent act, such as failed contraception or sterilization, which led to an unintended pregnancy.

But while these wrongful pregnancy lawsuits are now recognized in the majority of states in this country, they remain the only type of tort -- civil cases in which damages can be sought by an injured party for a wrongful act -- in which the plaintiff is not guaranteed the right to seek damages for all related injuries.

Caitlin Borgmann, CUNY law professor and reproductive rights expert, said that by not allowing recovery for the costs of raising a child, the vast majority of courts are just carving out this one area and cutting off this source of recovery. "There's something about pregnancy that makes courts want to treat it differently," she said. "Normally, if someone causes you a harm that's recognized in law as a tort -- if they did it negligently, not intentionally -- then they're responsible for anything foreseeable resulting from that conduct."