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Appropriately framing maternal request caesarean section

Romanis, Elizabeth Chloe

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Abstract

In their paper, ‘How to reach trustworthy decisions for caesarean sections on maternal request: a call for beneficial power’, Eide and Bærøe present maternal request caesarean sections (MRCS) as a site of conflict in obstetrics because birthing people are seeking access to a treatment ‘without any anticipated medical benefit’. While I agree with the conclusions of their paper -that there is a need to reform the approach to MRCS counselling to ensure that the structural vulnerability of pregnant people making birth decisions is addressed—I disagree with the framing of MRCS as having ‘no anticipated medical benefit’. I argue that MRCS is often inappropriately presented as unduly risky,without supporting empirical evidence,and that MRCS is most often sought by birthing people on the basis of a clinical need. I argue that there needs to be open conversation and frank willingness to acknowledge the values that are currently underpinning the presentation of MRCS as ‘clinically unnecessary’; specifically there needs to be more discussion of where and why the benefits of MRCS that are recognised by individual birthing people are not recognised by clinicians. This is important to ensure access to MRCS for birthing people that need it.

Citation

Romanis, E. C. (2022). Appropriately framing maternal request caesarean section. Journal of Medical Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2021-107806

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 21, 2021
Online Publication Date Jan 6, 2022
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date Jan 7, 2022
Publicly Available Date May 6, 2022
Journal Journal of Medical Ethics
Print ISSN 0306-6800
Electronic ISSN 1473-4257
Publisher BMJ Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2021-107806

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Medical Ethics, 2022 following peer review, and the Version of Record can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2021-107806. © Authors (or their employer(s)) OR © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd (for assignments of BMJ Case Reports) Reuse of this manuscript version (excluding any databases, tables, diagrams, photographs and other images or illustrative material included where another copyright owner is identified) is permitted strictly pursuant to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC 4.0) http://creativecommons.org https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/





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