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Chilling Example Of Dictatorial Bureaucracy?

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LazyGun | 01:07 Sun 01st Dec 2013 | News
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If the events of this story are as written, I find this story from the Telegraph to be an extraordinary example of abuse of power, plain and simple. Really quite scary.

I am not at all sure I can understand how it was that all those steps between what seems to be a mental breakdown at work to a stay in a psychiatric hospital and then onto a forced caesarean were taken, seemingly without any challenges as to their legality.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10486452/Woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social-services.html
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Really, pixie? Two weeks overdue, baby mispresenting, baby has abnormal heart rhythm, mother refusing consent for a C-Section is one situation where the action is appropriate.

Mother is raving, threatening to kill herself and her unborn baby is another.

Mother has active herpes or other STD that could affect the baby on vaginal delivery and refuses to give consent for a C-Section.

In that report the Italian judge accepted that the woman had no mental capacity so the social services and courts had to make decisions on her behalf. The Italian judge also accepted that the British courts had jurisdiction in this matter.

The only person that has offered to care for the baby is a family friend that lives in America. As the social services and courts have responsibility for that baby they cannot deem whether that friend is a fit person or not. The mother's mental illness may mean that she will be a threat to the baby.

Social services are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They are the ones with all the facts and they are not allowed to disclose them to the media.
Still don't agree. Even if someone doesn't have mental capacity, they have the right not to be assaulted.
I'm sure I heard on the news that she has two children already in care in Italy (although I wasn't listening 100%.)
so you would let the baby die then pixie?
Errr...obviously wouldn't want it to, but at that point the mother is the patient. How that can have done her any good, i have no idea.
She has 2 other children being cared for by relatives.
As ever, cloaked in secrecy.
Sometime pixie, all you can do is choose the least bad option.
The other thing to consider (I have some small experience of working with people with intermittent mental health issues) is how this lady would feel when/if she comes back to herself and is told that her actions, when she was so unwell, resulted in the death of her baby?

If the woman is in the UK and the circumstances are acute, how can the Italian authorities take over responsibility and management of her case?
to add, as i have just remembered this, I have met women whose mental stability is very badly affected by pregnancy hormones. In such a case it benefits both the mother and the baby for the baby to be born as soon as it is safe to do so and without hormonal inducement. In one very sad case, and this is many many years ago, I remember a lady who had been supported and kept safe by mental health services through two pregnancies. On the third occasion she managed to get out of a secure ward and threw herself under a car.
As you say, woofgang, sometimes none of the options are desirable. Unfortunately, childbirth is dangerous and sometimes mothers and/or babies die. However awful that is, i still haven't heard of this being done before, or imagine the mum will feel any happier knowing that this has happened either.
To me, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the child itself could be the focus of the acute psychosis: - if the mother is overzealously religious, they might believe it is "the Devil's child" or, if they've seen the relevant films, they might think it's an alien, about to eat its way out and, either way, they've expressed the intention to harm the child, the minute it is born.

I would like to know what was meant by the phrase "no mental capacity". If the patient has gone into complete torpor, failing to feed, drink, wash themselves then they obviously need something done about assisting with the birth.

If they are also unresponsive to verbal requests for permission to carry out medical procedures then the authorities are put on the spot but they have to take action, one way or another.

As for the fate of the child. I wonder if all its future adoptive parents will be suitably warned that its mother was bipolar and that there are variable odds of it having inherited the condition? I fear it may be in for a tough life.



as the details leak out piece meal
I think the lesson as always is, dont believe the lawyers.

I found that extremely worrying. The poor woman wasn't even a British subject. What a picture that paints of our so-called open society.
askyourgran, some things should be in secret. This woman is no criminal and her medical treatment is by rights totally private.

The bare facts are that her life and the life of unborn child was in danger and she urgently needed a c-section. The doctors in charge of her care sought permission from the courts to do the operation because the patient was not mentally capable of giving informed consent.

Why should that be in the public domain?

The Italian equivalent of the social service had removed her other two children from her and forbidden her to care for them. Again, none of our business.

Her mother is the guardian of her two children and she has said she does not want to care for a third.

Again, that is none on our business.

This woman is deemed incapable of looking after children. Usually such cases are kept out of the media to protect the identities of the children involved and the medical records of the mothers. It is, rightly, none of our business.
Just as adoptions aren't printed in the daily papers; or the details of children either given in to care or taken in to care.

The media concerned should be challenged or disciplined in some way for the very sensational - and misleading headlines. Of course, their defence will be that they could only report one side - the mother's because the doctors, social services and every one involved is bound by confidentiality.

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