High Court application to ensure woman has C Section

[krankykitty]

A hospital in Ireland made an emergency application today to the High Court to compel a pregnant woman to undergo a caesarean section

www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/woman-agrees-to-caesarean-after-hospital-goes-to-court-1.1320732

Poor woman - she must be terrifed. No wonder some women would rather free birth than get doctors involved.

I do not agree with doctors playing God.

it should be her choice.

why have they gone to court? article not detailed enough.

I agree, I'd like to know if there is any reason to question the woman's ability to give informed consent!

Shocking. Absolutely shocking

That seems bizzarre. Presumably they should have only taken it to court if they thought she wasn't able to consent? But then she is able to consent when she agrees with what they want?

That's quite scary - an example of what can happen when unborn babies have rights that are considered more important than the rights of the mother.

such a shame this wasn't tested in court, really. I very much hope that should this lady or her child experience any complications arising from the section she is equally willing to use the legal system.

Terrible stuff. I know we haven't got the full facts over the baby's condition, etc but from what's written it sounds like they don't want a vbac attempt due to scar rupture concerns.

Which is totally against the advice of most uk hospitals now. Here women are encouraged for a vbac and some hospitals won't actually allow a repeat lscs.

There's a similar case in America currently as well. The dr wrote to the woman saying if she didn't attend hospital in the next 48 hours he was going to send the police to her house to force her to the hospital!

In America the foetus has rights where in the uk it doesn't. Not sure of the position in Ireland?

It's mothering sunday. I prefer to think of the foetus having rights given as an act of grace by the mother.

If this is the woman I'm thinking of, who's already been named in the US press, she has had 4 CS's, has gestational diabetes, is overdue and is obese.

I thought the chances of true rupture were less than 1%?

That still shouldn't remove her right to decide though, expat

I wish it had been tested in Court.

It is very, very rare that hospitals go to Court about imposing treatment regardless of consent. I can think of a few cases, usually involving premature babies or people of any age when the condition is potentially terminal.

Such cases are explicitly not precedence forming (at least not in England/Wales) and it ensures that all parties get a proper chance to have their say.

In the US, it does because the foetus is viable.

Unfortunately no this doesn't seem to be about whether or not she's mentally capable of refusing consent. If it were there'd be an application to have her made a ward of court. The hospital are asking the court to balance her right to refuse treatment against the foetus' right to life which is enshrined in our disgusting constitution. Basically Ireland's antiabortion laws allow this kind of appalling shit to happen. Anyone wanting to help those fighting against it could like Irish pro-choice facebook groups and support pro-choice organisations. There's some momentum behind change here at the moment which the pro-choice movement is trying to make the most of.

Why the hospital are actually doing it I don't know. Perhaps the husband isn't on board with her decision or something and they're afraid of being sued. But then hospitals have standard procedures for covering themselves where people refuse recommended treatment. I don't know. Could even just be an anti-choice agenda of the consultant/hospital board. Suspicious that it's come so close to the death of Savita in Galway - there might be a connection though what it is I can't work out. I haven't seen anything like this done here before except in the case of children whose parents are refusing treatment for them. It's pretty disturbing. Really disturbing. Reminds me of similar cases in the US where women have actually been forced to have caesareans- women of sound mind (not that I'm saying it would be ok to treat the mentally ill that way - just that there are different issues there).

And if the caesarean goes wrong? What will be the position then? Will the hospital hide behind a 'just one of those things' stance. As as been said, it's a pity it wasn't tested in the courts.

Yes the foetus has rights here. I'm not sure it would have been a good thing for this to have been tested in the courts. The decision may well have been an ugly one and it would have been precedent-setting I'm pretty sure because the issue would have been a constitutional one. As expat has hinted this woman is most likely an extreme case of going against medical advice (the hospital's bean counters would have vetoed the application on cost grounds otherwise), but the principle that a woman's right to refuse treatment takes precedence over the rights of the foetus has to be upheld even in 'hard cases'.

This is totally disgusting.

There's been plenty of threads on MN about women disputing their due date and delaying being induced.

Its frightening that she is clearly not considered mentally competent to make this decision for herself and her baby and this isn't even under discussion.

She has been totally coerced and bullied and this goes totally against her human rights. The idea that she is doing this against her baby's needs is ridiculous.

I'm in shock.

If the caesarean went wrong the hospital would be in no difficulty whatsoever. You can be certain that if they've gone this far they have several senior obstetricians willing to give evidence that it was the correct decision at the time. No court requires medics to have the benefit of foresight. If the overwhelming weight of advice is that caesarean was by far the safest option then the hospital are in the clear (apart from the lack of consent which is what the application was intended to get around). The courts won't be giving equal weight to the woman's opinion of the safest way to proceed. That's not really the issue. It's that the hospital were asking specifically that the right of her foetus to life should outweight her right to refuse treatment. The court might well have had to agree based on our constitution.

Red If she weren't considered mentally competent they would have applied to make her a ward of court. It's even more sinister that they are making this application in relation to a woman who is being treated as being of sound mind and therefore competent to refuse treatment. I don't think we should get into the specifics though of whether she's one of the women whose dates are wrong etc. Obviously I'm completely opposed to this but we can also acknowledge that it's pretty unlikely the hospital would bring this case in the current climate unless they considered it a really extreme case of refusing treatment and were absolutely certain that they could stand over this in court. Whatever the medical situation though it doesn't in any way excuse coercing a woman into a medical procedure.

I think my thing is the fact that they dont need to discuss her mental competence. She's just incompetent because she's a woman.

MrsDV if she NEEDED to be sterilised because of the strength of the medical risk, why did she need to go private? I think thats the bit that speaks volumes.