Harvard Petrie-Flom Center: Forced Interventions (2025)
Pregnant women are the only competent patients forced into surgery
Pregnant patients are the only mentally competent adults whose right to refuse treatment is routinely overridden. Court-ordered C-sections have occurred in the US (Florida). Supreme Court declined to rule on constitutionality (1994).
The Petrie-Flom Center is Harvard's bioethics and health law institute. Their 2025 analysis of forced obstetric interventions in the US starts from a sharp observation: pregnant patients are the only mentally competent adults whose right to refuse treatment is routinely overridden by physicians and the courts. Documented cases include court-ordered cesareans, court-ordered hospitalization of pregnant women who decline care, and court-ordered medical procedures on women in labor.
Florida had a high-profile case where a hospital obtained a court order for a cesarean on a competent adult who had refused it. The Supreme Court declined to take up the constitutional question in 1994, leaving the lower-court divide intact. The piece argues that this is a category of patient whose autonomy is being treated differently than any other adult in the health system.
Only
Competent-adult category overridden routinely
1994
Supreme Court declined to rule
Florida
Documented court-ordered cesarean
Why it matters
Every other mentally competent adult has the legal right to refuse medical treatment. Pregnant women have less protection than that, and the courts have not resolved why.
This is one finding from the research library behind How to Birth a Mother. Everything here traces back to a study, a dataset, or a systematic review.