The doctors requested the court order after verifying that the woman and her partner insisted on giving birth at home with the help of a midwife.

A plenary session of the Constitutional Court has dismissed a woman’s appeal against a court order that forced her to be hospitalized to induce labor because of the risk to the life of the fetus. The woman insists on giving birth to the child at home.

Those responsible for Asturias’ health services went to court before the notice of doctors at the Central University Hospital of Asturias (HUCA) that, despite warnings given about the “imminent and grave danger to the life of the fetus”, the pregnant woman and her The companions wanted to give birth to the child in their own home with the help of the midwife.

Doctors warned of the risk of “fetal hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the blood) and intrauterine death” arising from the advanced stage of pregnancy.

After agreeing to the legal remedy, the woman was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where she gave birth to her daughter, after having a caesarean section scheduled for complications presented during a delivery that had begun spontaneously.

The appeal holds that the judicial remedy adopted was not protected by any legal rule, that it was not given a prior hearing and was not sufficiently motivated.

The Court begins by indicating the rights at stake: on the woman’s behalf, the right to physical liberty and the right to personal and family privacy. On the other hand, the life and health of the unborn.

The ruling, to which Judge António Narvez was rapporteur, acknowledges that there is no specific legislative provision that resolves this type of conflict, but adds that the judicial resolutions used different rules that, as a whole, “A reasonable regulatory coverage that was capable of intervening judicially and adopting a measure that was, ultimately, protected by a legal duty to protect property derived from the constitutional text”.

The mother argued that in order to restrict the fundamental right as was done to her, the law required that she be given a hearing. The TC responded that the “urgency of the situation” justified that the judicial decision could be reached without this process. In it he says that the court was “adequately motivated on the basis of suitability, necessity and proportionality of measure, concurrent circumstances and various rights and legal properties”.

There are three dissenting private votes in sentencing, drawn up by magistrates Juan Antonio Ziol Rosas, Ramón Cez and Inmaculada Montalbán, who believe that the appeal should have been upheld. They hold that the total lack of hearing cannot be condoned by concurrent urgent circumstances, “noting that there are adequate legal mechanisms to enable the said hearing even in cases of extraordinary urgency and the same can be followed in the case.” Is.”