Mom Forced To Attend Court While In Active Labor For Refusing To Have A C-Section Speaks Out
Pressmaster | Shutterstock Women have been fighting for the right to make their own decisions about their healthcare for years, and recent events make it look like that isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Our society has a way of only focusing on the nice aspects of giving birth when it’s really a complex medical issue. If there’s a complication, a woman’s life could easily be on the line. You would assume that everyone would have a say in their own medical care in life-or-death circumstances, but a Florida mom’s experience proved that’s not always true.
Cherise Doyley had to attend a court hearing over Zoom while she was in labor because she refused to have a C-section.
According to a ProPublica report, Doyley went to University of Florida Health in September 2024 after going into labor with her fourth child. Doyley works as a professional birthing doula, so she’s very familiar with the process, and she had a plan for what she wanted. After having C-sections for her three other children and experiencing some complications, she elected to have a vaginal birth if it was possible.
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Doctors were concerned about the possibility of uterine rupture if Doyley chose to forgo a C-section, but she knew that the risk of that happening was very low, and requested that she be able to attempt to deliver vaginally before automatically jumping to a C-section.
It seemed like the doctors relented, but after 12 hours of contractions, a nursing supervisor brought a tablet into Doyley’s hospital room with a judge, lawyers, and medical professionals assembled on Zoom for a court hearing.
Now, Doyley is sharing her side of the story after her experience has gone viral.
“This is documented obstetric violence and medical racism right in front of you,” she said in a TikTok video. “Bodily autonomy does not go out the window when you get pregnant.”
Doyley pointed out that ignoring her wishes is actually against the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (ACOG’s) ethical code. According to ACOG’s website, “The obstetrician-gynecologist’s duty is to the pregnant woman.” Unfortunately, a lot of medical providers don’t follow these guidelines.
Doyley is worried that her traumatic experience is really just the beginning of “a slippery slope.” She continued, “It starts here with court-ordered C-sections. Next, are they gonna be court-ordering people to not be able to get on birth control? Are they gonna be court-ordering people to get pregnant even though you said you don’t want kids, but the birth rate is low?”
Doyley’s story sounds like a nightmare, but it’s not unprecedented.
She believes that her race played a role in the care she received. Data clearly shows that Black women are more likely to have complications during childbirth, including higher mortality rates, than white women. However, Doyley said that white women have also been forced to have C-sections against their will in similar situations.
An analysis published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology noted, and even seemed to excuse the idea, that there are “rare situations” in which a medical provider can “override concerns for individual maternal autonomy and justify court-ordered intervention.”
Another study in the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal Nursing acknowledged that C-sections do sometimes occur because of a court order, but these situations “have denied to pregnant women rights that are accorded to all other competent adults in the United States.”
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In an increasingly conservative political climate, it does feel like the rights of women have been placed on the back burner as doctors adhere to the belief that they must deliver babies, no matter what it takes. In her hearing, Doyley did ask if the judge was concerned about what would happen to her three other children if she were to die in childbirth, but she didn’t receive a satisfactory answer.
Ultimately, Judge Michael Kalil ruled that doctors could perform a C-section in the case of an emergency, whether Doyley consented or not, which they did that night when the baby’s heart rate dropped. Doyley was not given the right to choose her own medical care simply because she was pregnant, which highlights a discrepancy between the principle that all patients should have rights and what mothers are forced to endure, whether they like it or not.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
