I’m a lawyer with the Northwest Women’s Law Center in Seattle. I’m investigating possible legal responses to bans on vaginal birth after cesarean at hospitals in the northwest states - Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon. If you are currently pregnant and want to have a VBAC, but are facing a hospital policy that would require you to have a c-section regardless of whether you want it and whether it is medically necessary, and are willing to consider working with a lawyer on this, we’d like to talk with you. Please email us at vbacbanhelp@ican-online.org. Our services will be provided free of charge.
This appears to be follow-up action to a Seattle PI editorial from September of this year.
Quotes from that article include:
In many parts of this state, having one C-section delivery will require another at a subsequent birth, even over the objection of the pregnant woman and her doctor. Several Washington hospitals refuse to allow doctors to provide labor and delivery services to pregnant women who have had a previous C-section unless those women submit to a second C-section delivery.
Policies and practices that force pregnant women to submit to unnecessary surgery cannot be justified. We would never countenance that practice for any other patient. Pointing to potential risk to the baby does not justify ignoring the mother's decisions about her medical care.
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