Your right to accept or refuse
Pregnancy does not reduce your authority over your own body.
You may decline a recommended cesarean. Professional guidance is explicit about this. It states that pregnancy does not lessen or limit the requirement to obtain informed consent or to honor a pregnant woman's refusal of recommended treatment.
The same guidance discourages clinicians in the strongest terms from using duress, manipulation, coercion, physical force or threats, and frames forced compliance as raising serious issues about bodily integrity and patient rights.
What this does not meanRefusing does not mean your doctor has to stop advising you, and it does not remove real risk. A doctor who believes surgery is needed should keep saying so, clearly and repeatedly. But recommending is not the same as deciding. The decision is yours.
Where this comes from:
256. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Refusal of medically recommended treatment during pregnancy. ACOG Committee Opinion No. 664. Obstet Gynecol. 2016;127(6):e175-e182.
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More from Before pregnancy
This page is educational. It supports the conversation with your own clinicians. It is not consent to any treatment, and it cannot assess you. If you are worried about a symptom now, see urgent warning signs.