Do pregnant women lose their right to bodily autonomy? (Interesting blog post.) [View All]

[Crunchy Frog]

http://navelgazingmidwife.squarespace.com/navelgazing-midwife-blog/2010/3/19/what-i-learned-watching-the-nih-vbac-conference.html#comments

What I learned watching the NIH VBAC Conference

I’ve never sat in on anything as political or crucial to the birth community as last week’s National Institute of Health’s Consensus Development Conference on Vaginal Births After Cesarean. I’ve been to Medical Board meetings, participated in the California Association of Midwives’ board meetings and witnessed the surges of energy (meetings) that eventually turned into the (re-)creation of legalizing midwives in Florida. The opportunity to see the two day conference (spread over three days) is still there by clicking on the NIH link above; I highly encourage birthy folks to take the time to listen through at least some of the presentations. There are too many highlights to pick just one speaker; several shared information so profound as to bring me to tears or to clench my fists – they sure evoked emotion!

~snip~

In the VBAC community, there is documentation of women who, even though they entered the hospital pushing, were forced… yes, physically… into the operating room and, even though they were screaming their objections (not a strong enough word), stating they were not consenting to the surgery, their abdomens and uteri were cut open and their babies pulled out of them. It sounds unreal, doesn’t it? Like this could never happen?

~snip~

Rebecca Spence from RHRealityCheck says, “Panelist Laurence McCullough, the Chair in Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine, spoke for the panel during the public comment session and in a press briefing, taking the position that a physician has an independent obligation to protect a fetus, which, it is claimed, is not dispensed by a laboring woman’s refusal to consent. The panelists’ comments indicated that a conclusion regarding the ethical question was beyond their scope, yet stated to the press and to the audience that the body of law and ethics that protects the right to refuse surgery was not written for, and may not include pregnant patients.” (emphasis mine) It took me asking several women and reading a few blogs before I understood what they were saying: that pregnant women might not/do not have the right to refuse a cesarean… that doctors can still force women, whether through the courts or even strong-arming them, into the operating room.

I'm wondering if other people here besides myself consider the issue of forced surgery and other medical treatment for pregnant women to be a choice issue.

http://consensus.nih.gov/2010/vbac.htm