UK social workers forcibly take woman's unborn baby

A high court order obtained by Essex county council allowed an Italian woman to be forcibly sedated and her child taken from her womb.

British social workers have forcibly sedated a pregnant woman and removed her baby by caesarean section after instructions from social services, a new report says.

According to the Sunday Telegraph report, Essex social services obtained a high court order against the Italian woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.

The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, who was in Britain for work reasons, because she had suffered a breakdown, according to the newspaper.

The 15 months old baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to return her to the mother even though she claimed to have made a full recovery.

The case is set to be raised in Parliament next week, with the woman’s lawyers claiming the council should have consulted her family first and Italian social services should have been put in charge of the child.

“I have never heard of anything like this in all my 40 years in the job,” Brendan Fleming, the woman’s British lawyer said.

“I can understand if someone is very ill that they may not be able to consent to a medical procedure, but a forced caesarean is unprecedented.

“If there were concerns about the care of this child by an Italian mother, then the better plan would have been for the authorities here to have notified social services in Italy and for the child to have been taken back there."

The woman, who is an Italian national, went to Britain in July last year to attend a training course with an airline at Stansted Airport in Essex.

She suffered a panic attack, which her relations believe was due to her failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition.

She called the police, who became concerned for her well-being and took her to a hospital, which she then realized was a psychiatric facility.

She has told her lawyers that when she said she wanted to return to her hotel, she was restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

A council spokesperson said: ‘Essex County Council does not comment on the circumstances of ongoing individual cases involving vulnerable people and children.’

PG/HGH

Source: Press TV