If anything, logic suggests that the familial relationship between parent and child, and the statutory obligations parents have to their children, would seem to increase the elements of obligation central to a viable tort case. However, the limiting factor for family tort actions is not a defect in the legal theory or a failure of obligation or fact, but a natural reluctance by family members to sue one another. Therefore there are few tort actions commenced between child and parent. Since the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Duval v. Seguin in the 1930s, it has been clear that persons born with damages suffered while a foetus can bring a tort action with respect those damages. While in some tort cases there may be questions as to whether the victim was foreseeable to the tortfeasor, this is unlikely to be the case between parent and child, particularly mother and child.
Nothing creates a special legal regime for the womb.
Canadian tort law applies in utero just as it does externus utero . Parents have no greater right to harm their children, or their children soon to be born, than anyone in the general public has to harm anyone else. That said, aspects of foetal development are relevant to the liability of parents to the future child. Many tort cases turn on the issue of remoteness or foreseeability of the damages. The caselaw is clear, the tortfeasor must take her victim as she finds him, thin-skull or not.