Category Archives: Informed Consent

Sarah L. Ainsworth is senior legal and legislative counsel at Northwest Women’s Law Center. She is the author of a recent article in a Washington paper. The article is entitled “High rate of C-section births is health concern for women”.

Some notable quotes from the article:

Both the law and respect for women’s humanity require that every pregnant woman be fully informed of the risks of all forms of labor and delivery in a language she can understand; that she be supported in her decisions about how to bring her children into the world, whether it be in a hospital, a birthing center or at home; and that she not be penalized for those decisions either medically or legally.

A pregnant woman must either submit to a subsequent C-section, whether she thinks it is a wise medical decision or not, or deliver her baby outside the hospital. For those women who do not want a home birth, or who cannot have one because of lack of health insurance coverage or lack of available midwives within a safe distance of home, this is coercion, not consent.

Policies and practices that force pregnant women to submit to unnecessary surgery cannot be justified. We would never countenance that practice for any other patient. Pointing to potential risk to the baby does not justify ignoring the mother’s decisions about her medical care.

Such reasoning inappropriately views a pregnant woman’s decision about her and her baby’s needs as suspect, and it ignores her legal rights as a patient. All pregnant women, whether they view birth as a natural event only rarely needing medical intervention, or whether they willingly accept medical assistance with the birth process, have the legal right to informed consent and to direct the experience of bringing their children into the world.

Cesarean’s are just one of many procedures that many birthing women are not allowed to give informed consent to. This is the first article or statement I have ever seen by someone in the legal field that says that this is legally wrong to do to women. I personally have contacted several lawyers and not one would talk to me, or allow me to pay them for an hour of their time while I presented my case to them. I am thrilled to see some acknowledgment by a legal organization that ignoring a pregnant woman’s rights is illegal and cannot be justified.

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