British appeals court has reversed lower court ordering disabled woman to abort child

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She’s being cared for by the NHS, but she isn’t in their “custody”. It is only in very rare circumstances (lack of mental capacity) that the NHS will try to make decisions for people. She is a woman who has a learning disability and some kind of mental illness that has not been defined except as a “mood disorder”. It is inevitable that she would be receiving long-term care from specialist doctors and that she would also be well known to her primary healthcare team. Now that she is pregnant it is even more obvious that she would be under the care of doctors and under close scrutiny. Those doctors have a duty of care for her no matter who is paying them. Even if she were being cared for privately, her doctors could still make an application to a court if they believed that her family was not acting in her best interests. In this case it seems that the doctors made a bad call and a judge also made a bad decision which has been swiftly reversed on appeal. Let’s just hope that the NHS trust doesn’t take this to the Supreme Court.

Courts making medical decisions on behalf of people who lack mental capacity is by no means restricted to the UK. There are numerous cases in the US too:

Cassandra Callender (Connecticut)

Sarah Hershberger (Ohio)

Daniel Hauser (Minnesota)

Elisha McCauley (Massachusetts)

The unique feature in this case is that it involved a court ordering a woman to undergo an abortion. As stated in one of the articles linked in comments above, lawyers have noted that this case is unique in British legal history. Also, the decision was swiftly reversed by more senior judges.
 
billsannie said:
And the mother was unable to prevent her daughter’s pregnancy, so giving her the added burden of a baby likely wouldn’t turn out well.
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I’m not so sure this is a fair assumption. Mothers can’t prevent their daughters’ pregnancy. We can’t stop bad choices, breaking condoms, or even rape. Believe me, I wish we could! But to call this an “added burden of a baby” is a little presumptuous. The baby’s grandmother is a professional midwife willing to provide all the support needed to raise this baby. How do you you know that she views this as a “burden?”

Also, please realize that when you call people conceived in challenging circumstances a “burden,” they can hear you. Many of them have learned to read, grown up, and have an Internet connection . . .
 
Thank you for this post. Parents of sexual assault victims should not be held responsible for the crimes committed against their children, unless of course they were somehow involved. There are many ways these crimes have harmed our children that parents cannot prevent. Babies are not burdens, they are often a source of healing.
 
I meant no offense to anyone, particularly those conceived in challenging circumstances. This is what I had in mind: the woman is a midwife. She is likely called up unpredictably on occasion. Likely she cannot always get someone to look after her daughter while she was out. An unavoidable lack of supervision may have been a factor in why her daughter is pregnant. Granted, “burden” wasn’t the best word choice, but a young child is a lot of work for anyone. With age, providing care for both her daughter and grandchild would become increasingly difficult. Furthermore, she would still have to work as a midwife. Would she always have someone to watch her grandchild on short notice? If not, would her daughter, with the intelligence level of a six to nine year old, understand the difference between her daughter and a doll? I remember the way I played with my dolls when I was six years old. Also my daughter, and every other six year old I’ve known. If the grandmother overestimated her daughter’s understanding, the results could be tragic. And the grandmother is getting older. If anything happened to her, would anyone be willing to care for both the mother and her child?

Considering all these difficult questions, I can’t believe that it would be in anyone’s best interests for the mother to keep the child. Giving it up would be the proper, moral solution. And mind, I’m not suggesting this, but even if the child were aborted at least it would feel no pain. This is more than one could say if the mother, quite innocently, treated it like a doll.
 
While I’m at it I’d like to apologize for my use of the word “burden”. When I wrote the posting I was pretty tired and the negative connotation of the word simply didn’t register with me. I was thinking in terms of more work being added to what is likely already a very busy life for the midwife. I’m sorry if I offended anyone.
 
billsannie said:
I meant no offense to anyone, particularly those conceived in challenging circumstances. This is what I had in mind: the woman is a midwife. She is likely called up unpredictably on occasion. Likely she cannot always get someone to look after her daughter while she was out. An unavoidable lack of supervision may have been a factor in why her daughter is pregnant. Granted, “burden” wasn’t the best word choice, but a young child is a lot of work for anyone. With age, providing care for both her daughter and grandchild would become increasingly difficult. Furthermore, she would still have to work as a midwife. Would she always have someone to watch her grandchild on short notice? If not, would her daughter, with the intelligence level of a six to nine year old, understand the difference between her daughter and a doll? I remember the way I played with my dolls when I was six years old. Also my daughter, and every other six year old I’ve known. If the grandmother overestimated her daughter’s understanding, the results could be tragic. And the grandmother is getting older. If anything happened to her, would anyone be willing to care for both the mother and her child?
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The question is does the government have the right to make that decision. If the grandmother was the one pregnant could she be forced to abort? The risks are the same. And things begin to look like China where a couple needs pernission from the government to have a child.
 
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The bottom line is that we really don’t know enough to play Armchair Jury to this case. We don’t know if the midwife is retired or taking on very limited cases, if there’s extended family helping out, support groups and resources available for them, etc.

My bias will shine, through, however. In my mind, taking away someone’s children OR medical freedom should be done in exceedingly rare cases. I’m suspicious that it’s done more often than that. 😦

I’m American and actually pretty critical of Britain’s child “welfare” system. That said, ours can be a lot worse sometimes.

Forced abortions and sterilizations are eugenic to their core and should terrify any civil society.

I do NOT think this is a case proves in any way that we are somehow better off in the States doling out $1200 for insulin treatments and dying of diseases we can’t afford to treat.
 
blackforest said:
I’m American and actually pretty critical of Britain’s child “welfare” system. That said, ours can be a lot worse sometimes.

Forced abortions and sterilizations are eugenic to their core and should terrify any civil society.

I do NOT think this is a case proves in any way that we are somehow better off in the States doling out $1200 for insulin treatments and dying of diseases we can’t afford to treat.
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  1. You’re a social worker right (forgiveness/remission/pardon because I know it probably isn’t the easiest or most pleasant, not to mention probably frustrating because of a broken system); what do you think can be done to fix America’s own system? From, what I understand there’s a trend towards to prioritizing resources like prevention, family preservation, family support and post-adoption/guardianship resources, what are your thoughts on that? Additionally, I understand that issues like child poverty and even racial or economic biases that contribute, how true is that? Furthermore, do you think more residential facilities for families like an (name removed by moderator)atient family-based housing center to support an entire family (treatment and support for both parents and children dealing with substance abuse could help cut down removals and promote sustainable recoveries (though aftercare may be critical)?
  2. Regarding issues with basic health care, again this is politically untenable, but could a lot of people be helped if we granted a lot of funding for community health centers (think $100 billion, $200 billion, $300 billion) to provide free basic health care for people in need (especially low-income and working-class people but maybe for everyone if possible), including preventive care, primary care, mental and behavioral health, basic specialty, vision and dental as well as pharmacy services? And by front-loading funding for CHCs, wouldn’t we reduce the pressure on programs like Medicaid and Medicare (of course, we’re still spending money either way) that can focus on other needs? There’s actually an outcome about it, I’m rather prideful about it even though it’s not my own original idea.
https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.csa.u...nals/journal_69/Author/Carolyn-McClanahan.pdf
 
The judge in the original case in my opinion made the wrong decision, thankfully we have a robust appeals system which overturned her ruling. What this case does highlight though, along with other higher profile cases over the past 18-24 months is the fact that people from outside the UK really do not understand how our legal and healthcare systems work.
 
Cecilia_Dympna said:
And quite a lot of offensive nonsense for us Brits.
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Inquisitor85 said:
people from outside the UK really do not understand how our legal and healthcare systems work.
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I think to a large extent it is a result of failing to understand the system and of focusing on a small number of extremely unusual cases that are not always entirely accurately reported. Quite a few people on this site believed that Alfie Evans was murdered by the British government. What became clear was that many of those people had been misinformed, perhaps deliberately, about a number of issues, including the actual nature of Alfie’s medical condition, how the NHS budget is allocated, the independence of the judiciary, and what the European Court of Human Rights is (or, more pertinently, isn’t). Some people even went so far as to suggest that the Catholic bishops of England and Wales were complicit in the alleged murder.
 
I appreciate all of the British feedback in this thread, thank you.
RCIAGraduate said:
You’re a social worker right (forgiveness/remission/pardon because I know it probably isn’t the easiest or most pleasant, not to mention probably frustrating because of a broken system);
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Good memory! I must communicate with 100+ CAFers and often lose track of who’s who! 😳 I love being a social worker! That’s easy for me to say because A) I’ve been out of the workforce homeschooling children for awhile, so it’s all too easy to get nostalgic and B) I never worked in child welfare. So as critical as I am, I can’t claim any impressive expertise!

The British contributors to this thread may be interested to know that when I was still in graduate school, the UK had a heavy recruitment effort to convince us Americans to move there and become child welfare social workers. We were bombarded with recruitment requests in grad school. There must be low job satisfaction there if they’re getting desperate enough to reach across the pond. This was in the early otts, though, so I’m not sure if it’s still going on.

Back on topic - yes, I’m absolutely all for the efforts that you enumerated, keeping in mind this whole time that we don’t even know if this young woman in the U.K. was being abused, (possibly raped, depending on the circumstances of the conception, but we don’t even know that).

Things need to be reformed at the government’s end because at least in the States, when a child welfare case gets investigated, the Constitution gets effectively flushed down the toilet. Unwarranted search and seizure is the norm, as is guilty-until-proven-innocent and a lack of due process. Poverty all too often gets dubbed as “child neglect” without any sustainable help for the poor. I understand that there are some clear-cut emergencies, but other cases are pretty far fetched. In too many cases, children are arguably in greater danger while in State custody. In Oregon the problem is beyond egregious. https://www.koin.com/news/local/mar...r-care-needs-more-money-culture-fix/947100387
  1. Thanks for your link. I’ll read it more in depth and give it some thought, perhaps resuming the discussion in another thread. 🙂 It seems like the proposed system would add a dash of public medicine to private, whereas in Britain I believe it’s largely public with the option of having a private doctor. The idea sounds intriguing. But then, if you remember what happened nearly a decade ago, a public option - option! - was proposed, and conservatives were screaming “Socialism!”
 
Elf01 said:
The question is does the government have the right to make that decision. .
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As has been said more than once, we have separation of Government and the Courts in the UK. It was not the Government making the ruling, it was a judge, and it was the three Appeal Court Judges who overturned the ruling.

Nothing to do with the Government! . We have a completely different system in the UK from that in the US… I am repeating myself because this seems to be a common misunderstanding on the part of US posters and it makes discussion of UK matters very frustrating for those of us who are UK citizens.
 
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  1. Thanks for your link. I’ll read it more in depth and give it some thought, perhaps resuming the discussion in another thread. 🙂 It seems like the proposed system would add a dash of public medicine to private, whereas in Britain I believe it’s largely public with the option of having a private doctor. The idea sounds intriguing. But then, if you remember what happened nearly a decade ago, a public option - option! - was proposed, and conservatives were screaming “Socialism!”
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  1. To be fair, to conservatives, their issue may be with the fact that this proposal would be pricey, very pricey (though it might reduce pressure on Medicaid)? This isn’t as far as single-payer (in fact, can work as alternative) so perhaps it could be an alternative to consider.
  2. Regarding, opposition to ACA, as long as their health care plans aren’t affected (since people losing or getting their plans changed seemed to spark some if not many people’s issues with the ACA), perhaps/maybe/possibly a lot of people are wouldn’t mind adding something like this to help the uninsured.
 
I actually meant it in the primary North American sense of being fired but I was in a way punning. The fact you interpreted it as necessarily inciting violence means the judge should also be “flagged by the community” for “inciting violence” against innocent and helpless children, rather than amoral and irresponsible judges.
 
I was never a fan but ‘terminate’ does have childhood echoes of “Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!”
 
Perhaps he tried not to confuse us by spelling it “dawg” which, I think, is some kind of male bff.
 
Except the American squiggly things inside would have to wear MAGA hats and the pepper pots would have to be pickup-sized.
 
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