A judge in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has issued a pioneering sentence in Spain that recognizes the "fundamental right" of a pregnant woman to choose between natural childbirth or cesarean section and condemns the Canarian health to compensate a mother with one million euros for prolonging a twin birth for 17 hours, considering it an act of "obstetric violence".

In a sentence to which Efe has had access, the Court of Administrative Litigation number 5 of the city rules that, by imposing natural childbirth on the mother, the doctors of the Maternal and Child Hospital of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria did not respect the "fundamental right" of the mother to decide if she wanted her twins to be born vaginally or by cesarean section, causing irreversible brain injuries to one of the children.

Magistrate Ángel Teba García thus estimates in its entirety the lawsuit filed by the Acosta y Navarro law firm on behalf of the affected against the Canary Islands Health Service, "before the flagrant violation by the intervening doctors of the right to information of which the parturient woman was the exclusive holder and of the inalienable faculty to opt for cesarean section as a surgical alternative to give birth to her two babies. "

The ruling considers that the woman was not informed "of the circumstances in which her delivery took place or of the advantages or disadvantages, dangers and risks of natural childbirth compared to cesarean section so that she, correctly informed, under her responsibility, could opt for one or another possibility. "

In this case, the judge reasons, "what is observed is the imposition 'contra legem' (against the law) of the medical criterion that the appellant gave birth by natural birth by subjecting her and the two fetuses to a strenuous natural birth that lasted a whopping 17 hours and with a disastrous result with which the mother and her child must suffer, in addition to his twin sister, and that no amount can ever compensate."

The sentence understands that the behavior of the doctors of the Maternal and Child Hospital incurred in an "inadmissible usurpation of a foreign right" that has resulted in "a terrible result, caused by those who stole the possibility that (the mother) could opt for cesarean section in due time avoiding any injury to her child. "

The judge defends that the right of the pregnant woman "to be informed of the existing alternatives, with their pros and cons, to give birth" assists her "during pregnancy, before giving birth, when the process began, throughout it and until the last moment of giving birth. "

And he reproaches the Canary Islands Health Service "a patriarchal conception of women, disdainful of their capacity for self-determination even when it is enshrined in the Law, cavalier with their competence to decide once correctly informed, which aborts any autonomy they may have and that can be described unambiguously as obstetric violence".

Circumstances of each case

The Canary Islands Health Service argued in the trial that the final decision between natural childbirth or cesarean section corresponds to the obstetrician and that it will be this medical professional who will have to assess the concurrent circumstances in each case to decide on it.

The ruling rejects that argument: "the final decision is not the doctor's but the patient's, under her responsibility, once correctly informed of her situation and the existing alternatives, in this case natural childbirth or cesarean section and ensures that the opposite is to circumvent the rights that the Law recognizes to patients, in this case any woman who is going to give birth."

The judge who issued it concludes that "what happened in the present case was the imposition 'manu militari' of the medical criteria of the doctors who assisted the appellant, who, in their professional work, do not contemplate any alternative to natural childbirth and therefore dispensed with informing, in writing, the mother during the period of 17 hours, of the alternative that constituted the caesarean section and of the advantages and risks that it implied.

The resolution recalls that the Canary Islands Health Service has been sentenced to pay large compensations in similar cases, which warns "should not be borne by the Canarian taxpayer but by those doctors who transgress the law in pursuit of the primacy of natural childbirth above any circumstance. "

  • Justice
  • Pregnancy

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