Woman with learning difficulties could be forcibly sterilised

[trouble]

Woman with learning difficulties could be forcibly sterilised
A woman with learning difficulties could be forcibly sterilised after she gives birth this week to stop her becoming pregnant again.

The secretive Court of Protection will rule on the woman’s case on Tuesday, in a rare open hearing scheduled because of the overwhelming “public interest” in understanding the case.

She is due to give birth by caesarean section on Wednesday and could undergo an operation to sterilise her at the same time, if the court agrees.

Disability campaigners described the prospect of such a “drastic” step as “quite wrong”.
The woman will be represented by the official solicitor, a government lawyer who represents those who cannot instruct their own legal team because they lack capacity.

The patient’s local NHS trust and council have made an application to the Court of Protection to decide whether she lacks the capacity to make decisions about contraception for herself - and if so, whether she should be sterilised by means of “tubal ligation”.

READ MORE: Woman with learning difficulties could be forcibly sterilised

I have a collection of stories like this because people keep telling me over and over again that these things don't happen anymore.

Comments

[silveradept]

Of course they don't happen, they say. Dickens is someone we read as part of our ancient literature classes, not someone whose society looks more and more like our own every day.