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Bridget Sielicki
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Abortion Pill·By Carole Novielli
Court awards grieving father damages after losing child to abortion
A Gila County trial judgement filed in the Arkansas Superior Court has found that Mario Villegas, the father of an aborted baby, is entitled to nearly $67,500 in statutory and compensatory damages due to "psychological, emotional, and physical injuries" he endured due to the intentional killing of his child.
The Court found that the Defendants — Phoenix abortion facility Camelback Family Planning, their owner Gabrielle J. Goodrick, and physician Kristen Livingston — failed to "comply with Arizona's Informed Consent Law." The Plaintiff had established that he experienced the "loss of parent-child relationship" that he "would have had," and that this injury "result[ed] from the violation [abortion]."
The law outlines that "A person shall not require a woman to obtain an abortion as a provision in a contract or as a condition of employment" and that any "physician who knowingly violates this section commits an act of unprofessional conduct and is subject to license suspension or revocation pursuant to title 32, chapter 13 or 17."
It stated:
An abortion shall not be performed or induced without the voluntary and informed consent of the woman on whom the abortion is to be performed or induced...
A statement that any physician who performs an abortion on a woman without obtaining the woman's voluntary and informed consent or without affording her a private medical consultation may be liable to the woman for damages in a civil action...based on a claim that failure to obtain informed consent was a result of simple negligence, gross negligence, wantonness, wilfulness, intention or any other legal standard of care.
Relief... includes the following:
1. Money damages for all psychological, emotional and physical injuries resulting from the violation of this section.
2. Statutory damages in an amount equal to $5,000 or three times the cost of the abortion, whichever is greater.
3. Reasonable attorney fees and costs.
The Act laid out who can file a civil action:
A woman on whom an abortion has been performed without her informed consent ...
The father of the unborn child if the father was married to the mother at the time she received the abortion, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff's criminal conduct.
A maternal grandparent of the unborn child if the mother was not at least eighteen years of age at the time of the abortion, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff's criminal conduct.
"If the lawsuit is successful, it would establish a dangerous precedent in Arizona concerning embryonic personhood and chill the provision of abortion care," wrote the Lawyering Project, which defended the abortion facility.
In July of 2018, Mario Villegas' wife (listed as a Defendant under the pseudonym M.S.V.) was pregnant with the couple's eight-week preborn baby, when she visited Camelback Family Planning. There, Goodrick "dispensed medications to induce an abortion," the court document alleged.
J. Stanley Martineau, an Arizona attorney who represented Villegas, claimed that Goodrick "induced M.S.V.'s abortion by giving her two abortion-inducing drugs, MifeprexTM and Misoprostol." He argued in court documents that Mario's ex-wife was not properly consented under the law for the abortion.
Judge Bryan B. Chambers of Gila County, Arizona, found that defendants failed to "obtain valid informed consent" under state law, which was required "least twenty-four hours before the abortion," among other requirements, and thus the "abortion should not have been performed[;] it was essentially an illegal abortion."
Abort73's Michael Spielman set the stage:
Though Mario Villegas—the father in the Arizona case—first filed his suit in 2020, by the time a motion for dismissal was argued in 2021, the influence of Roe was already slipping. It would be done away with entirely just a year later.
More importantly, a little-known Arizona statute from 2011 explicitly granted husbands the right to file a civil suit if their child had been aborted without procuring the mother’s full informed consent. This is precisely what was at issue in the case of Baby Villegas, whether or not Camelback Family Planning had disclosed all the information required of it to legally obtain the consent of the aborting mother.... After a two-day bench trial, Judge Bryon B. Chambers ruled on July 22 of this year that Camelback Family Planning had not disclosed to his wife information about abortion that was required by state law. As a result of this negligence, the abortion of Baby Villegas had taken place illegally which thereby qualifies it as a wrongful death.
... The term “unborn child” appears 11 times in the act, which is itself problematic for the Arizona abortion clinics tasked with fulfilling it.
Additional court documents claimed Defendants only gave M.S.V. the "information she wanted to hear" and did not inform M.S.V. about:
immediate and long-term medical risks of an abortion
alternatives to abortion
anatomical and physiological characteristics of her unborn child
These omissions were in addition to other requirements under State law.
Baby Villegas had a detectable heartbeat at the time of the abortion, which the court claimed caused the Plaintiff's injuries. Expert testimony enabled the Court to find that "more probably than not, the embryo would have been carried to term and born alive."
The baby's father claimed he was so distressed after learning of his wife's intention to obtain the abortion that he "could not eat," "function," or "focus," and he later filed for divorce claiming that he "couldn't get over the abortion part of our marriage" and continues to "carry the ultrasound image of the embryo everywhere he goes."
Despite the argument that the Plaintiff's wife would have had the abortion regardless of being properly consented, the Court determined that "it is impossible to know after the abortion what M.S.V. would have done before the abortion if Defendants had complied with the [Informed Consent] Act."
"Defendants' customs and practices encouraged M.S.V. to consent to an abortion before receiving the required information, not after, as required by the statute" and "informed M.S.V. by reading verbatim from a printed form that lacked much of the required information, and that misstated other required information," court documents stated.
The Court found that the Plaintiff had established a "loss of parent-child relationship the Plaintiff would have had" as an injury "resulting from the violation."
Therefore, the Court found that Villegas could seek damages for the "post-violation loss" of a baby that "Defendants had no legal authority to destroy without first complying with the Act."
The Plaintiff was not eligible to seek damages surrounding "pre-violation distress" regarding his wife's decision to have the abortion.
In July of 2026, Judge Bryan B Chambers wrote, in part (emphases added):
...[]this court finds that the Plaintiff is entitled to $5,000.00 in statutory damages for Defendants failure to comply with Arizona's Informed Consent Law A.R.S. § 36-2153, and $62,500.00 in compensatory damages for his psychological, emotional, and physical injuries resulting from Defendants violation of Arizona's Informed Consent Law.
Finally, as the prevailing party, Plaintiff is entitled to judgment for his attorney fees and costs, however, his recovery for attorney fees is limited to the fees incurred for the portions of this case where the Plaintiff prevailed. He is not entitled to recover attorney fees incurred in pursuit of claims that were rejected by the court in pretrial motions.
Mario Villegas' testimony was that he did not want "this to ever happen to somebody else. I mean, another man should never feel the pain that I feel."
In September of 2026, the Court also awarded the Plaintiff attorneys' fees against the Defendants in the amount $58,905, as well as taxable costs against the Defendants in the amount of $2,384.70.
"On February 6 of this year, the Women's Right to Know Act was declared unconstitutional by the Arizona state court, which means that Arizona abortion clinics are no longer required to disclose any of the information formerly required," Spielman reported.
Medical malpractice attorney Mike Seibel, who recently won a settlement for the estate of aborted Baby Wabbington, reviewed the case and pointed out that as more rulings like this continue, the personhood of the preborn child becomes impossible to dispute.
He told Live Action News:
"Even though the Court did not recognize the inherent value of the preborn person, they recognized the parental relationship.
Unlike Wabbington, which had a direct finding of personhood in one of its orders, this case recognized personhood in a different arena: the relationship between a father and a child as compensable.
Since the law does not allow damages for a relationship of a non-person, this case helps build a compelling case for personhood."
Live Action News also reached out to the attorney who represented the father in this case, but had not received a response as of the date of publication.
However, in court records, Martineau emphasized that "there are many ways to keep abortion practitioners honest, and awarding damages plus fees for a wrongful abortion does just that."
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
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·Abortion Pill·By Carole Novielli
Court awards grieving father damages after losing child to abortion
A Gila County trial judgement filed in the Arkansas Superior Court has found that Mario Villegas, the father of an aborted baby, is entitled to nearly $67,500 in statutory and compensatory damages due to "psychological, emotional, and physical injuries" he endured due to the intentional killing of his child.
The Court found that the Defendants — Phoenix abortion facility Camelback Family Planning, their owner Gabrielle J. Goodrick, and physician Kristen Livingston — failed to "comply with Arizona's Informed Consent Law." The Plaintiff had established that he experienced the "loss of parent-child relationship" that he "would have had," and that this injury "result[ed] from the violation [abortion]."
The law outlines that "A person shall not require a woman to obtain an abortion as a provision in a contract or as a condition of employment" and that any "physician who knowingly violates this section commits an act of unprofessional conduct and is subject to license suspension or revocation pursuant to title 32, chapter 13 or 17."
It stated:
An abortion shall not be performed or induced without the voluntary and informed consent of the woman on whom the abortion is to be performed or induced...
A statement that any physician who performs an abortion on a woman without obtaining the woman's voluntary and informed consent or without affording her a private medical consultation may be liable to the woman for damages in a civil action...based on a claim that failure to obtain informed consent was a result of simple negligence, gross negligence, wantonness, wilfulness, intention or any other legal standard of care.
Relief... includes the following:
1. Money damages for all psychological, emotional and physical injuries resulting from the violation of this section.
2. Statutory damages in an amount equal to $5,000 or three times the cost of the abortion, whichever is greater.
3. Reasonable attorney fees and costs.
The Act laid out who can file a civil action:
A woman on whom an abortion has been performed without her informed consent ...
The father of the unborn child if the father was married to the mother at the time she received the abortion, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff's criminal conduct.
A maternal grandparent of the unborn child if the mother was not at least eighteen years of age at the time of the abortion, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff's criminal conduct.
"If the lawsuit is successful, it would establish a dangerous precedent in Arizona concerning embryonic personhood and chill the provision of abortion care," wrote the Lawyering Project, which defended the abortion facility.
In July of 2018, Mario Villegas' wife (listed as a Defendant under the pseudonym M.S.V.) was pregnant with the couple's eight-week preborn baby, when she visited Camelback Family Planning. There, Goodrick "dispensed medications to induce an abortion," the court document alleged.
J. Stanley Martineau, an Arizona attorney who represented Villegas, claimed that Goodrick "induced M.S.V.'s abortion by giving her two abortion-inducing drugs, MifeprexTM and Misoprostol." He argued in court documents that Mario's ex-wife was not properly consented under the law for the abortion.
Judge Bryan B. Chambers of Gila County, Arizona, found that defendants failed to "obtain valid informed consent" under state law, which was required "least twenty-four hours before the abortion," among other requirements, and thus the "abortion should not have been performed[;] it was essentially an illegal abortion."
Abort73's Michael Spielman set the stage:
Though Mario Villegas—the father in the Arizona case—first filed his suit in 2020, by the time a motion for dismissal was argued in 2021, the influence of Roe was already slipping. It would be done away with entirely just a year later.
More importantly, a little-known Arizona statute from 2011 explicitly granted husbands the right to file a civil suit if their child had been aborted without procuring the mother’s full informed consent. This is precisely what was at issue in the case of Baby Villegas, whether or not Camelback Family Planning had disclosed all the information required of it to legally obtain the consent of the aborting mother.... After a two-day bench trial, Judge Bryon B. Chambers ruled on July 22 of this year that Camelback Family Planning had not disclosed to his wife information about abortion that was required by state law. As a result of this negligence, the abortion of Baby Villegas had taken place illegally which thereby qualifies it as a wrongful death.
... The term “unborn child” appears 11 times in the act, which is itself problematic for the Arizona abortion clinics tasked with fulfilling it.
Additional court documents claimed Defendants only gave M.S.V. the "information she wanted to hear" and did not inform M.S.V. about:
immediate and long-term medical risks of an abortion
alternatives to abortion
anatomical and physiological characteristics of her unborn child
These omissions were in addition to other requirements under State law.
Baby Villegas had a detectable heartbeat at the time of the abortion, which the court claimed caused the Plaintiff's injuries. Expert testimony enabled the Court to find that "more probably than not, the embryo would have been carried to term and born alive."
The baby's father claimed he was so distressed after learning of his wife's intention to obtain the abortion that he "could not eat," "function," or "focus," and he later filed for divorce claiming that he "couldn't get over the abortion part of our marriage" and continues to "carry the ultrasound image of the embryo everywhere he goes."
Despite the argument that the Plaintiff's wife would have had the abortion regardless of being properly consented, the Court determined that "it is impossible to know after the abortion what M.S.V. would have done before the abortion if Defendants had complied with the [Informed Consent] Act."
"Defendants' customs and practices encouraged M.S.V. to consent to an abortion before receiving the required information, not after, as required by the statute" and "informed M.S.V. by reading verbatim from a printed form that lacked much of the required information, and that misstated other required information," court documents stated.
The Court found that the Plaintiff had established a "loss of parent-child relationship the Plaintiff would have had" as an injury "resulting from the violation."
Therefore, the Court found that Villegas could seek damages for the "post-violation loss" of a baby that "Defendants had no legal authority to destroy without first complying with the Act."
The Plaintiff was not eligible to seek damages surrounding "pre-violation distress" regarding his wife's decision to have the abortion.
In July of 2026, Judge Bryan B Chambers wrote, in part (emphases added):
...[]this court finds that the Plaintiff is entitled to $5,000.00 in statutory damages for Defendants failure to comply with Arizona's Informed Consent Law A.R.S. § 36-2153, and $62,500.00 in compensatory damages for his psychological, emotional, and physical injuries resulting from Defendants violation of Arizona's Informed Consent Law.
Finally, as the prevailing party, Plaintiff is entitled to judgment for his attorney fees and costs, however, his recovery for attorney fees is limited to the fees incurred for the portions of this case where the Plaintiff prevailed. He is not entitled to recover attorney fees incurred in pursuit of claims that were rejected by the court in pretrial motions.
Mario Villegas' testimony was that he did not want "this to ever happen to somebody else. I mean, another man should never feel the pain that I feel."
In September of 2026, the Court also awarded the Plaintiff attorneys' fees against the Defendants in the amount $58,905, as well as taxable costs against the Defendants in the amount of $2,384.70.
"On February 6 of this year, the Women's Right to Know Act was declared unconstitutional by the Arizona state court, which means that Arizona abortion clinics are no longer required to disclose any of the information formerly required," Spielman reported.
Medical malpractice attorney Mike Seibel, who recently won a settlement for the estate of aborted Baby Wabbington, reviewed the case and pointed out that as more rulings like this continue, the personhood of the preborn child becomes impossible to dispute.
He told Live Action News:
"Even though the Court did not recognize the inherent value of the preborn person, they recognized the parental relationship.
Unlike Wabbington, which had a direct finding of personhood in one of its orders, this case recognized personhood in a different arena: the relationship between a father and a child as compensable.
Since the law does not allow damages for a relationship of a non-person, this case helps build a compelling case for personhood."
Live Action News also reached out to the attorney who represented the father in this case, but had not received a response as of the date of publication.
However, in court records, Martineau emphasized that "there are many ways to keep abortion practitioners honest, and awarding damages plus fees for a wrongful abortion does just that."
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Bridget Sielicki
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