Pay close attention because what follows is quite confusing, but it is almost certainly the plot of the next Jodi Picault novel and has a Very Important Message. The story begins in 2001 in a department store in Las Palmas, one of two largish cities in the Canary Islands, an outpost of Spain off the coast of Morocco.

A woman was working at a cash register when an old friend made a purchase. To her disgust the friend looked straight through her as if they had never met. Furious, she unburdened herself to a girlfriend. In due course, this woman passed this on to the shopper, who denied ever having been in the shop. This was relayed back to the shop assistant.

A few days, the shopper, whose name was Berta, returned a garment and the shop assistant plucked up the courage to tell her that she was the mirror image of her friend Belén. Three days later she introduced the two women.

Berta and Belén were struck by the likeness. They discovered, too, that they had been born in the same hospital in 1973, one on January 15 and the other on January 18. Belén disclosed that although she did have a twin sister she didn't look very much like her. A dark cloud of suspicion hung over the horizon. 

What about a DNA test to dispel their unease? Berta refused. However, after a couple of years of agonising uncertainty, in 2004, a DNA test was done which showed that the women were identical twins.

For Berta, the outcome was psychologically devastating. Her legal parents refused to accept the result and she broke off all contact with them. She fell into a depression and needed psychiatric treatment.

"I would give anything to be the woman I was seven years ago," she told the local newspaper. I would like to get back my parents and my sisters, the family with which I lived the best years of my life. Even though I met my biological mother and sister, I can never treat them as mother and sister. I just don’t feel the affection I feel for my legal family. I would have preferred to remain ignorant. There is no money which can compensate me for this."

Earlier this year a court found that the two babies must have been swapped in the neo-natal intensive care ward of the now-defunct hosptal of Nuestra Senora del Pino. It awarded 360,000 Euros to Berta, who had lived apart from her biological family for her whole life, and 180,000 to Belén, the twin who had remained with her family. It also warded 180,000 Euros to the biological mother of the twins and 180,000 Euros to the other woman who was taken from her biological family.

The lawyer for the three women appealed to the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child. He pointed out that Articles 7 and 8 guaranteed "the right of the child to preserve his or her identity" and the duty of the state to speedily re-establish this in the event of a mishap.

The Very Important Message? In view of the anguish suffered by these two women and their families and the court’s decision in their favour, will the children born from the ever-expanding permutations of assisted reproductive technology be able to sue someone for denying them their identity? ~ EuropaPress, May 26, 2008; EuropaPress, Mar 31