Are we free or do we just think we are? Can we make our own decisions or just in case others feel good? Are you the owner of your body or when you go to health, you give your freedom to the professionals, who will do with you what seems best to them?
They are questions that every pregnant woman should become because the pregnancy belongs to each woman, also her birth, and yet there are times when they lose absolute control of the process, to a greater or lesser extent, and stop being able to decide.
"Yes, but if you get very nervous we will make your epidural," they told my wife when she asked her on a routine visit if she could give birth without an epidural; "Lie down and don't move so much"; "Stop screaming that you lose strength"; "You're not doing well, do you see how you could not?"; "You are not collaborating, we are going to make you a C-section"; and the last, perhaps the most violent, one of the most extreme cases, that of a woman who was recommended an induction, decided to wait to see how the delivery was going and the police ended up at home to take her against her will to cause her to be delivered to the hospital.
Forced to be a mother when neither you nor your baby wants yet
"Well, well, it would be necessary," "it was certainly urgent," "the doctors will know more than she does," many people will think when they know what happened, trying to justify the unjustifiable and leaving the victim to complain, because hey, many women are induced every day and nothing happens.
Nothing happens? Of course it happens: she didn't want that birth.
It all started two weeks ago in the Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu Hospital from Sant Boi de LLobregat, in Barcelona, when a pregnant woman went to the monitors to see how everything was going. This is nothing more than putting the straps around the belly and recording the baby's activity routinely, in case there is something that is not going well.
There the professionals told him that there was something in the register that could make the induction advisable. The mother, based on her legal rights to decide on her body, commented that I preferred to wait for a delivery when I touchedbut accepting that in case of emergency you will have a caesarean section.
She was summoned to return to monitors a few days later, and again they explained that it was advisable to induce labor, to which she replied again that, not being an emergency, she preferred to wait, and that if the caesarean section was needed, I would not refuse.
In the Hospital they should not have taken very well that a woman assumed the reins of her body, her life, that of her baby and her pregnancy, and decided that the recommendation would eventually be fulfilled, contrary to her will, whatever it was. They resorted to justice to get a court order that forced women to undergo an induction, alleging reasons of urgency and imminent danger to the baby's health. Given this situation, of course, the judge drafted the order and the police moved to his home to enforce the court order.
The urgency turned out to be postponeable, and the birth of a criminal
Imagine the situation: the police knock on the door of your house with a court order that says you have to accompany them to the hospital because you are putting your baby's life at risk. You go with them and once you arrive at the hospital, escorted at all times so that you do not escape and induce labor, because it is urgent, it turns out that you go there six hours clock, six, waiting for them to carry out that so urgently, feeling you probably a criminal, wondering at all times what you have done wrong to find yourself in that situation and wondering why a professional can reach such extremes just to show you that in your delivery you send he.
Because it makes no sense that in the court order it is estimated that there is imminent danger to the baby's health and once you arrive at the hospital it takes six hours to proceed to initiate the induction protocol. In fact, it doesn't even make sense for you to be taken so that your child is born because it is an urgent matter and they do not make you a C-section.
In other words: there was no reason to force the mother to give birth with haste, because if it had been so, she would not even have gone home; from the monitors he would have passed to the delivery room where he would have had a C-section.
And I do not say with this that there was nothing that recommended induction. They probably saw something that made them consider that option the best. Well then the woman is informed of the recommendation and, before her denial, she is given a document that says that has been informed but rejects the action that is recommended, to be signed. This is most common in hospitals and what should have been done.
Imagine that something had happened in induction
So the professional who requested the court order could have fooled the judge by exaggerating the diagnosis to get his way, to exercise his power, to show this woman that nobody ignores a recommendation from her.
Imagine that something had happened in the induction (as we have explained on other occasions, the induction carries associated risks), that the baby or the mother had had a secondary problem; Who would then take responsibility for the responsibilities? Because the mother did not take those risks.
But there is no need to get there: having done everything right, what has happened is negligible, reprehensible and a sign that women can be denied their most fundamental rights.
Spanish law says that "the patient or user has the right to freely decide, after receiving the appropriate information, among the available clinical options". It also says that "every patient or user has the right to refuse treatment, except in the cases determined in the Law. Your refusal to treat will be in writing," the exceptions being:
The doctors may carry out the essential clinical interventions in favor of the patient's health, without the need for their consent, in the following cases:a) When there is a risk to public health due to sanitary reasons established by the Law. In any case, once the relevant measures have been adopted, in accordance with the provisions of Organic Law 3/1986, they will be communicated to the judicial authority in the maximum period of 24 hours provided they have the mandatory detention of persons.
b) When there is an immediate serious risk to the physical or psychological integrity of the patient and it is not possible to obtain their authorization, consulting, when circumstances permit, their family members or persons in fact related to it.
And it was neither a matter of public health nor was there an immediate serious risk, in light of the facts. The law also says that actions will be taken against the will of the person when he is not able to make decisions, which is not the case either.
So yes, it's very scary the power it can have A person for the mere fact of having a gynecology degree and considering, therefore, that women who should only help bring their babies to the world in case of problems are at their mercy.
