FACTS: Nita Villanueva had herself aborted for the first time in 1948 by the defendant Antonio Geluz. After her marriage with the plaintiff Oscar Lazo, she again became pregnant. As she was then employed in the Commission on Elections and her pregnancy proved to be inconvenient, she had herself aborted again by the defendant in October 1953. Less than two years later, she again became pregnant. Nita was again aborted, of a two-month old fetus without the knowledge and consent of plaintiff, who was then in Cagayan, campaigning for his election to the provincial board.
On the basis of the third and last abortion, plaintiff filed an action and award of damages. The Court of Appeals and the trial court predicated the award of damages in the sum of P3,000.06 based on the initial paragraph of Article 2206 of the Civil Code of the Philippines.
ISSUE: Whether an unborn fetus that is not endowed with personality is entitled to damages.
RULING: No. An unborn fetus does not reach the category of natural person and consequently is considered not born under the law. It is incapable of having rights and obligations. In fact, even if a cause of action did accrue on behalf of the unborn child, the same was extinguished by its pre-natal death, since no transmission to anyone can take place from on that lacked juridical personality (or juridical capacity as distinguished from capacity to act). It is no answer to invoke the provisional personality of a conceived child (conceptus pro nato habetur) under Article 40 of the Civil Code, because that same article expressly limits such provisional personality by imposing the condition that the child should be subsequently born alive: “provided it be born later with the condition specified in the following article”.
In the present case, there is no dispute that the child was dead when separated from its mother’s womb.
This is not to say that the parents are not entitled to collect any damages at all. But such damages must be those inflicted directly upon them, as distinguished from the injury or violation of the rights of the deceased, his right to life and physical integrity. Because the parents can not expect either help, support or services from an unborn child, they would normally be limited to moral damages for the illegal arrest of the normal development of the spes hominis that was the fetus, i.e., on account of distress and anguish attendant to its loss, and the disappointment of their parental expectations (Art. 2217 Civil Code), as well as to exemplary damages, if the circumstances should warrant them (Art. 2230).
