A pregnant woman who suffered obstetric violence in Spain should be compensated by the State for having suffered a premature birth and a caesarean section without her authorization, a UN committee said Thursday.
The Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women considers that the victim -whose identity is not revealed- “has suffered obstetric violence, a particular type of violence against women (…) of which it is shown that they are generalized, systematic in nature and embedded in health systems,” said a statement from the Committee.
The Committee urged Spain to pay the victim “adequate compensation for the damage suffered.”
postpartum post-traumatic stress
According to the facts denounced by the Committee, the victim was subjected to an unjustified induction of labor before a cesarean section was imposed while her arms were tied to the bed and in the absence of her husband. Once the baby was born, she was prevented from taking him in her arms. She subsequently suffered from postpartum PTSD.
The Committee urged Spain to “respect the autonomy of women and their ability to make informed decisions about their reproductive health by providing them with full information at each stage of childbirth and by requiring their free, prior and informed access to any invasive treatment during childbirth.”
Procedures that traumatized her “physically and mentally”
“If the doctors and nurses had followed all the applicable rules and protocols, it is possible that the victim would have given birth naturally without having to go through all these procedures that traumatized her physically and mentally,” said Hiroko Akizuki, a member of the Committee. .
According to this committee, the victim who brought the case before the Spanish justice “came up against sexist stereotypes and discrimination throughout the entire administrative and judicial process.”
“During the procedure in Spain, they told him that it was the doctor who decided whether or not to perform a caesarean section and that the psychological damage he had suffered was only a matter of perception,” the committee further stresses.
Source: BFM TV
