Grassroots Network Message 806035
Attorneys looking for VBAC ban victims

Dear Friends,

As you are likely aware, many women are denied access to VBAC (Vaginal birth
after cesarean) because of hospital policies and outright bans. Attorneys
with the Northwest Women's Law Center in Seattle are looking at this issue.
One of them asked us to post the following:

I'm a lawyer with the Northwest Women's Law Center in Seattle. I'm
investigating possible legal responses to bans on vaginal birth after
cesarean at hospitals in the northwest states Alaska, Idaho, Montana,
Washington and Oregon. If you are currently pregnant and want to have a
VBAC, but are facing a hospital policy that would require you to have a
c-section regardless of whether you want it and regardless of whether it is
actually medically necessary, and you are willing to consider working with a
lawyer on this, we'd like to talk with you. Please respond to *
vbacbanhelp@ican-online.org 40ican-online.org>* .

Even if you are not in one of the states listed, you can still help by
emailing this out to any email lists you are on and asking everyone who
receives it to email it to all the lists THEY are on as well so that it is
distributed far and wide. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Susan Hodges, "gatekeeper"

******************************************************

Here, too, is an article on the International Cesarean Awareness Network website on what women can do if their hospital bans VBAC.

 

VBAC denial is a shocking violation of medical and even human rights. There are no other circumstances when a person can be forced to undergo any invasive procedure, let alone major surgery, in order to benefit another person. The argument that the hospital doesn't have the facility to handle an urgent cesarean is bogus. Emergencies do occur in labor, not a few of which result from conventional obstetric management. If a hospital says it is not safe for a VBAC labor, it is saying it isn't safe for any woman to labor there.

 

-- Henci