Daily Mail
December 7, 2013
What sort of country locks up a pregnant mother with a mental illness, cuts the baby from her womb against her will and hands it over to the State – all under an enforced veil of secrecy?
A third world banana republic? A totalitarian dictatorship? No. Modern Britain.
That’s what happened in the case of Alessandra Pacchieri, the 35-year-old mother who is fighting the ironically named Court of Protection for the right to care for her own child.
At four months pregnant, Italian-born Alessandra called police in Essex after suffering a severe panic attack while training here to become an air hostess.
She is bi-polar and had stopped taking her medication due to fears the drugs could harm her unborn child.
Alessandra was taken to hospital, where she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and detained until days before her due date, when a caesarean section was performed without her consent.
Mr Justice Mostyn, who presided over the case, said in a secret court that the mother should not know of the order for the C-section and authorised ‘reasonable and proportionate force’ if required.
So a distraught mother was drugged and dragged onto a hospital bed for the operation. But it gets worse.