The first birth of S. (he prefers to preserve his identity) became the first conviction for obstetric violence in Spain for an induced birth "without apparent justification." It happened 14 years ago and in 2020 the UN ruling came, but three years after the ruling, this Galician woman continues to litigate so that the Spanish justice system recognizes her case and compensates her. She assures that she was induced into labor for no reason, that she was mistreated and that, among other things, they removed the placenta “manually”. She was also separated for a week from her newborn daughter, both admitted to the same hospital and they gave her a blank birth report. Now the prosecution, with the unapplied UN opinion, has taken the case to the Supreme Court.
In September 2009 S., a judicial officer, arrived at the public hospital in Lugo, the town where she was born and where she lived before moving to Vigo. She was 39 weeks and six days pregnant and came for "counseling" because she had irregular contractions. But she was not in labor, says the UN opinion. Despite this, the doctor who attended her decided to induce her delivery.
"She was subjected to numerous interventions for which she did not receive any explanation" in an induced labor without "apparent justification", details the condemnatory opinion of the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). She was also not asked for her consent "about the procedures to which she was subjected."
A “very instrumentalized” birth in which her husband could not be present. "The treatment was distant and authoritarian," laments this Galician woman. She was injected with "synthetic oxytocin" without consulting. And this caused her, according to her, that the contradictions were more "painful, intense and without rest because it is something artificial." She was also given valium by vein, although she was not aware of this until she saw it in the medical report, which she had to request through the courts after the hospital gave her a blank sheet at her first request. She only remembers that in a conversation with the anesthetist who was going to give her the epidural, she heard "don't tell her anything, she's groggy." It was long after she read the word valium that she made sense of her comment.
She assures that she was subjected to a dozen vaginal examinations and that the delivery ended in an episiotomy of which she was not informed. A birth in which she did not allow her husband to be present. And she denounces that they removed her placenta "by reaching in and destroying it with the walls of the endometrium." These types of actions are not common and can only take place in cases where there is no spontaneous expulsion or there is some emergency that must be treated, specialists in the field have explained to this medium.
After the traumatic delivery, S. also remained hospitalized for a week. Also her newborn daughter, but they couldn't be together more than “two half hours a day”. The oxytocin had made her mother ill and she would not stop vomiting. And the newborn she remained hospitalized for a fever that S. she attributes to the multiple vaginal examinations to which she was subjected and that she assures that she demonstrated in the trial. This made it extremely difficult for her to breastfeed.
The sum of all these situations caused S. post-traumatic stress and required psychological help in addition to physiotherapy for the episiotomy. Two years of physical and mental recovery, "complications" and many problems. And even in this process, this woman began a judicial journey that 14 years later still lasts and that she began by having to claim the birth report in court. "They ignored me and I am a lawyer and my writings were correctly written."
Together with Francisca Fernández Guillén, her lawyer and who has also been the jurist who has achieved the other two convictions for obstetric violence in Spain, they filed a lawsuit that was dismissed and also an appeal for amparo in the Constitutional Court. They exhausted all avenues until they decided to take the case to the UN, whose CEDAW agreed with them in February 2020. But "Spain has no intention of complying with this or the other two resolutions," laments Fernández Guillén. The lawyer explains that the Xunta de Galicia has "sided" in this matter and that the Spanish State affirms, in order not to comply with the ruling, that "its courts and tribunals are sovereign." But Fernández Guillén, who filed the lawsuit with the UN with the help of a group of jurists, remembers that if you sign an international treaty, "you must accept and correct what that body says."
Now the prosecutor of the National Court has supported the resolution and has said that "indeed the treaties are to be fulfilled and the compensation requests must be attended to," says the lawyer.
After more than a decade of struggle and many "sticks" - all despite the UN opinion - this Galician is in favor of celebrating small steps like the prosecution agrees with them. This is, for S., the secret to enduring without giving up. If the Supreme Court ruling ended up being favorable, it would not be a victory solely for S. "It would be a great reference for compliance with human rights and the fight against discrimination against women," says her lawyer.
