European Court of Human Rights

Abstract

On 1 August 2008 the applicant, who was then in the thirtieth or thirty-first week of pregnancy, was admitted to a municipal maternity hospital showing symptoms of rhesus incompatibility and excess amniotic fluid (polyhydramnios). She signed a consent form for a Caesarean section without sterilisation. During surgery the doctors also identified a rupture of the uterus, without bleeding. Given the applicant’s age, 28 years, the doctors decided to suture the rupture and keep the uterus. However, given earlier surgical interventions on the uterus, the Caesarean section and the hysterography (repair of the uterus), the doctors decided that there was a real risk that the uterus would rupture in a future pregnancy, which could endanger the applicant’s life, and that therefore she should be sterilised. According to the applicant, she was told the day after the surgery that she had been sterilised, but she was not given any further details about what the procedure meant. Two years later the applicant and her husband decided to have a child and as she could not get pregnant, she saw a gynaecologist, who explained that she could only get pregnant via in vitro fertilisation because she had been sterilised during the Caesarean section in 2008.