EDMONTON (CP) - Doctors told Lisa Rewega that her five-month pregnancy saved her life when she was thrown from her car after hitting a patch of black ice.

Now Rewega said it's her turn to save little Brooklynn, the daughter who was born four months later with severe disabilities. This week the Alberta legislature granted her wish by closing a legal loophole that had allowed Rewega's insurance company to avoid paying a claim for Brooklyn's injuries because they occurred before she was born.

Rewega and her husband Doug have been to court repeatedly and lobbied the government for two years, but they still describe their experience as a journey of love and determination.

"It's taught me a lot - patience, loving unconditionally," Doug said Friday as Brooklyn, now a curly-haired moppet of four, cuddled in his lap.

Doug and Lisa had waited seven years before starting a family. They worked hard, saved their money and bought a house in Rainbow Lake, a tiny hamlet in northern Alberta where Doug has an oilfield service business.

But the dream for a "normal life" vanished on Dec. 31, 2000, when Lisa was driving to church. She was thrown from her rolling vehicle and suffered a broken neck and pelvis.

"I did the splits, and being pregnant, Brooklyn saved me," she said. "If I wouldn't have been pregnant, I would have died - that's what they told me."

Lisa, now 37, spent eight months in hospital and still faces life-threatening surgery to repair a 12-centimetre break in her pelvis and relieve her chronic pain. But her own troubles pale in the face of her determination to make sure Brooklynn gets the care she needs.

"I fight every day for my child," she said. "If I'm not going to be here, if I can't walk, I just want her never to be in a home and I just want to do what's right and have her looked after.

Brooklyn is healthy in many ways - at four she's already wearing size 7 clothes. She's a busy kid who loves water and anything with a motor - trains, planes or automobiles.

"She experiences everything we do; she's not left out of anything," said Doug, his eyes sparkling as he gazes at his precious daughter. "She goes fishing, she goes everywhere."

But Brooklynn is blind, has cerebral palsy and suffers from seizures every day. She needs the kind of constant care that the family's auto insurance would likely have covered if only her dad had been driving that day, or if she'd been a baby already.

Instead the Rewegas have had to pay for her live-in caregiver and a long list of other costs. While their case is still before the court, the change made by Alberta legislators Thursday will go a long way to easing the burden.

The family watched from the gallery as Lt.-Gov. Norman Kwong gave royal assent to a private bill aimed specifically at allowing Brooklynn to sue her mother as well as a government bill intended to extend the same benefit to others in similar situations.

Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has said she worries the law gives legal weight to the notion that an unborn child is a person.

Others fear it could open the door for children to sue their mothers for all kinds of potentially harmful activities during pregnancy - from shovelling snow to drinking.

Jim Rivait of the Insurance Bureau of Canada figures the government is offloading a responsibility to care for the disabled onto insurance companies, and motorists will pay higher premiums as a result.

But Alberta Justice Minister Ron Stevens said these cases are rare, and the law has been carefully drafted so that it applies only to auto accidents and the mother's liability is strictly limited to that covered by her auto insurance policy.

It follows a 1999 Supreme Court ruling on the New Brunswick case of Cynthia Dobson and her son Ryan. The court said women should not be held liable for injuries to a fetus in most cases, but that provincial legislatures could make an exception for motor vehicle crashes because drivers are required to buy insurance precisely to cover such events.

"I'll never have another child," she said, her voice breaking. "This is the only child I have. I'm left with a crotch that's 12 centimetres broken. I can't look after my child. All I'm saying is I just want to have that."

"When we had an accident of this nature, it changed things for the better. Just in my life it's taught me a lot of different things, the love end of it, the patience, the perseverance with the insurance.

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