Shock case: Social services forcibly remove unborn baby from sedated woman after she has ‘panic attack’

A pregnant woman who woke up from sedation to find her baby daughter had been removed by caesarean section and taken away by social workers is fighting for her to be returned.

pregnant-woman

by Jessica Anais Rach |
Published on

The Italian national was in England on a business trip last year, when she suffered a panic attack after reportedly failing to take her medication for bipolar disorder.

Despite her woman’s mother explaining her condition to police over the phone, the mother-of-two was taken to a psychiatric hospital and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

According to reports, Essex social services obtained a High Court order to have her baby removed from her womb.

'I have never heard of anything like this in all my 40 years in the job.'

Five weeks later she was told she could not have any breakfast, before she was forcibly sedated and awoke to find her baby had been removed.

The woman was then escorted back to Italy.

However when she returned to England in February to fight for the return of her daughter, she was told that the now 15-month-old girl was to be put up for adoption in case her mother suffered a relapse.

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who plans to raise the issue in Parliament this week, said:

‘I have seen a number of cases of abuses of people’s rights in the family courts, but this has to be one of the more extreme.’

'We remain committed to fighting to help mother be re-united with her baby'

Speaking about the ongoing case, solicitor Brendan Fleming said:

‘I have never heard of anything like this in all my 40 years in the job.

‘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.

‘We remain committed to fighting for our clients and shall fight tooth and nail to help mother be re-united with her baby.’

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