Tony asked:

I am looking at the case of a pregnant Nigerian woman who had recently emigrated to the UK. She
was advised that she would need a Caesarean operation. Unfortunately the woman concerned could
not comply with this as this was against her religious beliefs and replied supposedly, "If it is the will of
Allah that the child lives, so be it. If it is the will of Allah that the child dies, then alas, so be it."

Unfortunately the doctor did not see it this way, and applied under the British Mental Health Act to
have the woman declared mentally ill, and so was able to carry out the Caesarean operation against
her wishes.

Can you please explain to me how the Court of Appeal, when judging the merits of this woman's
case, might have gone about reviewing who had the right to life, or the right to see their beliefs not
questioned? But what of providing a voice of advocacy for the unborn child, who unless brought forth
via a Caesarean operation would not have come into the world?

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There is no denying that a foetus has a moral claim. If it didn't, then there would be nothing wrong
with a woman changing her mind about her pregnancy at the last minute, and demanding that the
foetus be removed and disposed of.

The foetus has a claim. But it is not a claim that is strong enough to prevent, for example, the
emergency destruction a foetus in circumstances where the mother's life is in grave danger, where
medical complications prevent the removal of the foetus while it is still alive (rare as such a case
might be). Most would agree that the mother has a stronger claim to life than her unborn foetus.

But what about a case where we are balancing the right to life of the foetus, not with the mother's
right to life, but with other very important rights, like the right not to be operated upon without her
consent?

The first point to make is that, in the present case, there is no question but that the doctor was wrong
to have the Nigerian woman 'Sectioned' under the Mental Health Act. He broke the law. The purpose
of Section 3 of the Mental Health Act is to put under restraint people who because of mental illness
are incapable of looking after their own affairs. To 'Section' a patient, two doctor's signatures are
required. The doctors who signed the order to detain the Nigerian woman lied. They declared that the
woman was mentally ill, when she wasn't.

The doctor knew he would be breaking the law if he simply had the woman anaesthatized and
opened up, without telling her what he was intending to do. Instead, he not only broke the law but
abused it.

Sometimes one can be morally justified in breaking the law. So let's put aside that question and
consider simply whether it was morally right to operate on the Nigerian woman without her consent,
whether the moral claim of the foetus was stronger than that of the mother.

I find that proposition simply incredible. Even if the woman did not have strong religious objections,
but merely disliked the idea of being operated on and preferred to take the chance of a normal
delivery, there could have been no justification for coercion. Even if the circumstances had been such
— which they were not — that we could have said that she was morally wrong to refuse an
operation, it was still her decision and no-one else's.

Geoffrey Klempner