I SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN

Evie has won a landmark case in which the judge agreed her debilitating condition is the fault of the doctor who failed to offer her mom preconception counselling

- DENNIS CAVERNELIS

SHE’S carving a meaningful life for herself as an activist for the disabled and a talented showjumper. And her courage and determination have caught the attention of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

But every day is a challenge for 20-year old Evie Toombes, who has spina bifida. She spends up to 20 hours a day connected to feeding tubes to have intravenous “meals” to circumvent her weak and ineffective internal organs.

Incontinence and constipation are part of her existence and as she grows older she will become increasingly wheelchair-bound.

And this wouldn’t be her reality, Evie says, if her mother had received proper medical advice before becoming pregnant. With the correct advice, she wouldn’t have been born and trapped in an endless cycle of pain and discomfort.

She felt so strongly about the wrongness of her origins that she took her case all the way to the London high court – making legal history and world headlines in the process.

Evie, who lives in Skegness in England, sued her mother’s doctor for “wrongful conception”, blaming him for her “having been born in a damaged state”.

She argued if the doctor had given her mother, Caroline Toombes (50), sound preconception counselling she would have delayed getting pregnant.

Instead she had Evie, who was diagnosed with lipomyelomeningocele, the medical term for her form of severe spina bifida. A neural defect to the spine meant her bones didn’t develop properly along her spinal cord, causing permanent disability and resulting in a seriously compromised quality of life.