Friday, March 18, 2011

Woman loses custody of child for five years for refusing C-section

Article can be found here.

by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

March 17, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A New Jersey woman has lost custody of her child for the past five years for refusing to sign a consent form permitting a C-section during her child’s birth, according to an exclusive report published by Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper.
 
The Daily Mail reports that the woman, whose initials are given as VM, was accused of child abuse by staff of St. Barnabas Hospital of New Jersey for refusing to sign the document, despite the fact that VM agreed to submit to the operation if it later became necessary.

Although VM’s judgment turned out to be correct, and she gave birth naturally through her birth canal to a healthy baby child, her child was taken away by authorities.

After years of judicial proceedings, in which the trial judge and an appellate court upheld the decision to deprive VM of her child, she finally received a favorable ruling on a second appeal. The case was remanded to the lower court judge, who still must issue a revised ruling.  VM’s husband, whose initials are BG, has also been deprived of custody.

In overturning the lower court ruling, the New Jersey Superior Court reportedly stated, “Termination [of parental rights] is among the most extraordinary remedies that can be exercised by a court. We must insist that the remedy be reserved for those instances where the state meets the extraordinary burden imposed by the law.”

It adds: “That burden has not been met here.”

Wow. So much to say on this one. In a country that allows the unborn child to be murdered up until the moment of birth, under the guise of "a woman's right to choose" and "my body, my choice", this is a disgusting display of hypocrisy. So it's not okay to have a natural birth, if a doctor considers it dangerous, even though his true and only concern is a malpractice suit, and his insurance company dropping him. But killing the child is fine if the parents don't want it.

Having a repeat cesarean has a greater risk of mortality and morbidity than the minute chances of uterine rupture. If there is a dead or injured mom or baby, traditionally, courts have ruled in favor of physicians if they performed a c-section, and against them if they instead cautiously observed and waited. So in spite of the fact that performing the surgery leads to more harm done than not performing the surgery, the first is considered "doing everything in their power to save the baby/mother", and therefore usually is ruled in the physician's favor. The health of mother and baby is not the main concern - the doctor's medical license is. Erring on the side of caution to them means performing an almost always unnecessary cesarean, whereas erring on the side of caution regarding the mother/child would be to observe and wait.

This is not an isolated, rare case. I have blogged on court-ordered cesareans before. There was a case like that in Arizona a little over one year ago, and another one of a mother whose baby was taken at birth after she refused to sign the consent form for the surgery (her baby was eventually returned to her - I was unable to retrieve the news article on that). It goes back to government officials thinking that they know better what is in the best interest of our own children, even though they would never have a fraction of the love that normal parents feel for their children toward those same children. Are there parents who hate and abuse their children? Certainly. However, they are not the kind who fight tooth and nail to protect their unborn child from the risks of unnecessary surgery. They are more likely the kind who will get an abortion, which of course, is not only legal, but funded by the government. 

Sadly, this further proves my point that the hospital is the worst place to have a baby. Is it sometimes necessary to transfer to the hospital, or even to have a cesarean? Certainly, but those life-or-death cases are very, very rare. Do you think all elderly people should live at a hospital in case they suffer a heart attack? That would be silly. Yet, labor offers many more warning signs of things turning in an undesired direction, so there is time to transfer if necessary. It's not like at the hospital, the surgical team is just standing by every laboring woman's bedside, scrubbed clean and suited up for surgery, with the OR clean and available, and the team of nurses ready and waiting, just in case something should go wrong. If there is a need to transfer, the midwife usually calls when the parents are getting in the car and leaving home, and likely they will arrive at the hospital before the surgeon and OR are even ready for them. Cases like this, however, will make parents LESS likely to transfer, worsening the situation if there is a true medical emergency. Going to the hospital is so dangerous, it becomes a last ditch, desperate effort when pretty much all other options have been exhausted. It ought not be like that. Women should make the choice to birth at home because of preference, not because going to the hospital is such a dangerous option.

Click here to read about another case of a newborn baby being stolen from the parents by government officials at the hospital.

This post is not about the question of home vs. hospital birth. It is about government overstepping their bounds and abusing their power to prove a point, intimidate, coerce, harass, and injure (both physically, and emotionally). 

What are your thoughts on this?

25 comments:

  1. SCARY! Your so right about everything. Most OB's today have never even seen a 100% natural birth. The government/courts are really overstepping their boundaries. We think we are free because the culture and media tells us but really we are not. :(

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  2. Oh my...that is HORRIBLE! Welcome to America...or should I say Obamaland. Yikes.

    It is scary to see where our country is headed. Taking a child away from a mother because she had him/her vaginally????? Whaaaaaaaat? Wow. That is appauling.

    Makes me want a homebirth. Maybe someday we will be able to have one. :)

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  3. ~sally~ i'm sorry, but if this case happened 5 years ago, Obama wasn't president. just saying.

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  4. If you take women's rights to have abortions, then you are making the government have an even bigger say in what the woman can do with the unborn child. So although I see your point in that the situation is hypocritical, what you would like to implement would only lead to further control of what is acceptable for a pregnant woman to do.

    I think you also forget the Jehovah witness cult that would rather see their children die that get a transfusion and in some countries the courts have to order the transfusions against the parent's will. Those are the loving parents that actually do harm.

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  5. This is perfect timing. I just saw my midwife for my first appointment. This will be my 2nd home birth. I had a hospital birth with my first 2, a home birth, 2 hospital births with a midwife, then this one will be a home birth. I was feeling a bit guilty for having this one at home because it will be paid for out of pocket because our insurance won't cover it. Insurance will cover anything in the hospital and with the hospital midwife who last time told me she had plans so I had better hurry up and give birth. I was second guessing my decision but this just confirms my 'gut instinct' to stay at home. We would only have to pay $250 if we went to the hospital. I think that even though we will be paying about 9 times more, it will be so worth it.

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  6. My thoughts on this are just wow.

    With so many liberties being eroded, I sometimes wonder how much longer will we be able to homeschool, refuse vaxxing our kids, etc.

    A concern of mine when we took Ethan off of asthma medicine was DCF getting involved. He had some bouts with asthma that were scary, but today he is 100% CURED from asthma.

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  7. This is the what we are coming too. This is crazy. But c sections are so rampant now a days. My Daughter is 26 and I remember being young and ill informed (my mom had 2 c-sections) after laboring all day(on iv pitocin) and at 5:30pm the Dr came in and said you need a c-section I beleived him. I'm sure the only reason was he wanted to go home!!!!!

    Thank the Lord I had good doctors one in Germany who said you can have this next baby nautral so my next two were natural with no problems, in a hospital.


    This is a real problem, that our goverment can do this to people, but yet like you said kill unborn children in the womb like it is nothing!!!! God help us all.

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  8. That poor woman and child. Our "justice system" is a big fat joke at best. It is wicked. I am so sorry for this woman. My worst fears are places like the hospital....even Dr.s office. I mean even walking down the street, if someone doesn't like the way you parent they can call the big bad CPS and ruin your life.

    Anyhow....did you get the book? I hope you did I sent it weeks ago.

    Tell everyone hi from us. We miss you. I have been listening to old sermons. I love the "Division" one.......... tell Pastor A to keep it up. There is not a better preacher than him!!!

    Anna is precious Zsuzsa!! She looks so like an Anderson child!!! :) Just wanna kiss her! Her and Hannah would just love eachother!!! :)

    Take Care!!!

    Love,
    Jessica

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  9. What a scary acticle! This is indeed were Ireland is headed also...I was told by my midwife team during my last pregnancy that EVERY breeched birth MUST be delivered by caesarian as is was now EU law! I wondered on the way home what would they do to enforce such a law if indeed it had been passed?

    I was floored...though I never could turn up anything on this supposed law! Our governments really do control our every move right down to as much of our parental choice as possible!

    I would love to have a home birth in the future! Thank you for highlighting this disturbing article Zsuzsanna!

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  10. do you know if there is an update to the story you linked to from Alex Jones site? I was wondering if they were able to get their baby back.

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  11. How strange we live in a world that a woman can have her child taken away from her due to something so silly but celebrities often randomly pick days to have a c-section so they dont have to 'deal' with labor or want a chance to get their bodies back to where they were before pregnancy.

    She agreed to have the operation if necessary so what more did they want from her?

    I read a news story last year about an 18 year old woman that was 23 weeks pregnant and decided to fly to Florida and have an abortion.

    The nurses started the 'termination' while waiting for the Doctor (who was away from the office) except he didnt bother coming right away which resulted in the LIVE birth of the baby.

    And what do you do when your 23 week pregnant patient delivers a LIVE baby when the 'termination' didnt complete as planned? You wrap the live baby in a biohazard bag and "throw it out".

    The mother above was treated like a victim, she said she didnt really know that there was a baby inside of her and that the longer she was pregnant the more of an option abortion was. Her quote - "I thought it would be a blob thing, but bigger, not a baby. They never said anything to me that would make me think it was a baby. They never said anything like ‘baby,’ ‘fetus.’ Nothing."

    Yet this woman sues (and WINS)the clinic and Doctor but a woman that simply didnt want to take any undue risks with her child gets that child taken away?

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  12. I get where you're coming from, and I'm a doula, and totally on board with what you're saying about c-sections, but I also think that you can't have the best of both worlds...I think that it is anti-abortion sentiment that has brought us to this place. Women can't have autonomy over their bodies and be able to have the right to choose if they have surgery such as this or not AND have fetuses have legal rights as humans as well. When you give a fetus recognition as a human entity before birth, you open the door for women who miscarry to be charged with murder, and for women who don't want unnecessary surgery to be charged with child neglect and endangerment. Women need complete autonomy over their bodies.

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  13. I have thought about this travesty. Grieved, prayed and shook my head along with my husband. I thank the Lord for HIS protection in my life on issues where we have faced different,but similar challenges with medical POWER'S that be.

    When my children are raised, I may be bolder. For now, our family 1. Walks very carefully around those who have "power" in this dark age. We pray for wisdom, and where possible, speak softly. 2. As a family, we have learned -sad to say- that living out of our homeland is often MUCH safer n these and other child-raising issues.
    I hold my baby a little closer tonight. My first three were homebirths,but with number 4 I needed a hospital transport during labor. I was treated with excellence. The issue came with baby. No, we do not want eye drops. No, we will "wait on the Hep. B vaccine" I didn't say WAIT AS IN FOREVER! :-) No, his fever, blood-pressue...has already been checked so we do notgive consent todo itagain,and again,and again - thank you. These gentle, natural rles of parenting DID upset some of the "POWER" in the end, with lots of smiles, and praise, we tiptoed out thankful to have our baby.

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  14. Abortion is murder. Why do people think that if we want to choose how we give birth, that we have to allow cold blood murder? Why is choosing to kill your child a right? Then why is it not a right to kill the child when they are 2 or 5. After all who is the government to tell us we can't murder our own child right? Oh yeah we can only kill them until they are out of our womb. So they are taking away our rights when we can't murder them after they are born? I don't understand how its a right to kill your child just because it is in your womb? But the second its born it is murder? Not sure how murdering your child has anything to do with choosing how and where you want to give birth. A women should have rights over her body, but what about the babies body? The parent should have rights to do what they want with their child, but when it involves harming them, not spanking, but really harming them, or killing them, they lose some of thoes rights. So we should allow kids to be beat and not feed for days because we can't take away parents rights? How are thoes not rights but killing our child should be? So we have to accept that, if we want to choose how we give birth? Any one eles see how stupid that sounds. Choosing to kill your own child is not just sick and disturbing, but wrong. Women wanting to give birth at home or not by a c-section when not needed is not wrong or harming the child. And don't give me some stupid reson like they got raped or can't take care of a child. There are millions of couples waiting to adopt. There is no right reason to kill your child.

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  15. There is more to this story. The mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the baby was removed becuse of her irrational behavior, including her refusal to consider the c-section. For further details, read here: http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/feature/2009/07/23/c_section_neglect

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  16. I think that this case is terrible. I recently read a blog where a woman was having a VBAC at home. She was in labor for 60 hours, but the baby was born perfectly healthy. Had she chosen to have the baby at the hospital, they would have insisted on a C-section because her labor progressed do slowly.

    However, I do take issue with your mention of the Irish-Taylor case. That was totally different. While, yes, there was a mention (in the affidavit) of Irish's affiliation with the Oath Keeper's and it was completely superfluous, that was not the reason that the state was trying to take custody of the baby. If you dig deeper, you will find that Taylor and Irish have a history of domestic abuse between them. Taylor had two children before this one, and the state was in the process of permanently terminating her parental rights of said children. Irish's father was even advocating that this baby be taken away for the parents. I listened to an interview that he gave on some Christian radio program, and he testified of his son's violence towards Taylor. You could tell that this father was not bitter or vindicative towards his son but was seriously concerned about the safety of the child. Irish's father even wept when he recalled how Irish had lost an eye in some accident when he was a child. (He wears a fake eye now.)

    When this ordeal first happened, Irish released a copy of the affidavit so that it could be published on the internet. You see that one of the reasons is his affiliation with Oath Keepers. What you don't see are all the other reason listed because they are all blacked out. One has to wonder what Irish is hiding by not allowing those other things to be seen, especially when he didn't bother concealing personal information like his home address and such.

    The baby was eventually returned to Irish and Taylor, and I think that that is unfortunate given their history. I don't know what has happened since then but I hope that the baby has been safe.

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  17. This is why i am afraid to have a baby. I am afraid of hospitals doing that but also am afraid of having a baby at home without pain meds. I don't like pain. I think I should just not have kids :(

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  18. Sophie, Avital, and anyone else who thinks we must permit abortion in order to not have women's births interfered with by the government:

    In all respect, I could not disagree with you stronger. I think you have bought into a lie spread by the abortion crowd. There are even saved, anti-abortion Christians who are inclined to believe what you are saying, but let me explain why you are wrong.

    (1) Abortion IS legal. And yet, there are court-ordered cesareans, as well as cases of children being taken from their parents for refusing to have one. In fact, I'll go a step further and say that I think we have many times MORE such cases since abortion became legal, not fewer. Is anyone arguing with the fact that forcible cesareans are a thing of recent times? Abortion is the result of a disrespect for human life, be it that of mothers, or babies.

    (2) There is a big difference between parents acting in what they believe to be in the best interest of the child, and intentionally killing them. Nobody is attempting a VBAC as a form of abortion.

    (3) Nobody has the right to intentionally harm the body of another human being. The same reason why doctors cannot cut open a woman against her consent is the same reason why nobody can kill a baby (who is obviously not consenting). "my body, my choice" is true - but the baby is not my body!

    (4) I do not believe in ANY form of forced medical treatment. Yes, that includes allowing parents to decide against giving their child blood transfusions, organ donations, chemotherapy, etc. THAT is the slippery road that will end us all in fascism. What's next? Telling women they MUST take vitamins when pregnant? They must exercise, not smoke, not eat fast food etc? All those factors greatly improve survival rates for the baby.

    (5) "Pro-choice" is a total misnomer because those people are the most oppressive of all. What they mean is that they should get to make all the choices THEY want, and we will be forced to take their position, or else.

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  19. anon on march 20 @ 8:44,

    are you kidding me? That article further proves how wicked and evil the case workers were!

    Let's see:

    - the woman acts "erratic" during labor - say it isn't so! have you ever gone through labor???

    - even the psycho-babbler says she is totally mentally capable, but the social workers do not like that opinion, so they shop for a different one. It reminds me of kids who toss a coin to make a decision, but then they don't like what they got so they keep tossing it until they like the outcome.

    - The second phycho evaluates the woman as she goes through labor, transition, pushing, and birth. All while being accosted by doctors and nurses. Do you have any idea how vulnerable women in labor are, and how traumatic and abusive it was to put her through that?

    - Every reason that the social workers bring up for why the mother is an unfit parent is for things she did AFTER having her baby taken away. I do not for one second think she sounds crazy at all, but even if she were crazy, maybe it was as a result of having her child stolen by people into whose care she entrusted herself???!?

    - Basically, she is declared insane because she distrusts and is scared of case workers and psycho-babblers. Hm, I wonder if that is because they are the ones who took her baby? Doesn't sound psychotic at all to me. I can see why she is refusing medication for something she is not suffering from.

    - Why did the father lose his parental rights, just because the mother would not have a c-section? Could he have forced her to have one? In fact, that would probably be labeled abuse if he dictated any of her medical care! Instead, they declare him crazy for agreeing with the mother, conveniently.

    You are a sick, perverted megalomaniac if you agree with the government abusers on this, and too much of a coward to leave so much as an initial. You will reap what you sow one day.

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  20. I agree it should not be this way because a woman has to go to the hospital to have a baby . The gov. is over stepping their bounds .

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  21. I have had two c-sections and am going for a VBA2C with our third. I even had to switch doctors because there are so many who won't do it. They don't want to get sued, I guess, even though vaginal births are safer.

    And "reproductive choice for women" only applies to abortions, apparently? Nice.

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  22. p.s. Zsuzsanna, do you have a higher than average IQ? I am asking this question seriously. Your posts are always very well-thought-out and you're able to identify silly red-herring arguments against what you are arguing instead of being distracted by what the other person is trying to distract you from.

    All that to say, this is a compliment. :)

    We are foster parents and seeing how the system works is...um...interesting, at best.

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  23. I know this article is very old, but may I comment that the woman had a serious psychiatric history for years before giving birth and had been seeing and psychiatrist and taking medication. She stopped the meds when she became pregnant (good) but would not resume any treatment afterward. She was increasingly psychotic saying things like "she knew Donald Trump" and she and her husband gave dozens of conflcting stories about: she was in psych care, no she wasn't, she had taken medication, no she didn't == what was true? All she had to do to get the baby was go back under psychiatric care, and take a parenting class. I would do that in an instant to get my baby back. So, for 5 years she refused these simple steps, and therefore couldn't get custody. Her husband also could have gotten custody (although she could not live in the home) but he didn't want to. Her mother said her daughter has had problems her whole life and hoped that the baby be adopted by a loving couple. Please! The internet is so incredibly tainted; the news stories slap on a dramatic headline to an article, and post it. The internet is getting worse and worse about this over the years..... So, basically the C-section had nothing to do with it.
    By the way, my husband was a case manager with the mentally ill for over 35 years, so of course I guess you'd say he is evil. And I know Pastor Anderson says to pray, and you won't be mentally ill...

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  24. the daily mail is garbage. it's a tabloid just like the national enquirer. don't ever read that drivel.

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  25. Some of the comments here say you can't have it both ways- no abortion, no rights over your own body. Well guess what, a fetus IS NOT YOUR OWN BODY. It's basic science: the fetus has different DNA, different blood, etc. It's not the woman's body. It's an individual human created at conception. So, I want to be in charge of my health decisions and those of my unborn child. And if my decision for my unborn child is that it be put to death, I should also be put to death because that's wicked and evil and immoral.

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Your KINDLY WORDED, constructive comments are welcome, whether or not they express a differing opinion. All others will be deleted without second thought.