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with sterilisation? This has echoes of policies from a different era in which the
intellectually disabled were allowed to leave institutions as long as they were sterilised
(Sabergh and Edgerton, 1962, p. 216). The permanent removal of the reproductive
capacity of a woman seems like a high price to pay for an intellectually disabled person
to have sexual freedom.
Pregnancy and medicalisation
Once a risk of pregnancy had been identified, the focus of many of the cases turned to
giving the reasons why the people concerned must not get pregnant. Included in these
was that pregnancy would be detrimental to the women’s welfare 15 , that the birth
process could be traumatic 16 and that the woman could not cope with caring for the
baby 17 . The evidence given supporting these assessments was commonly presented as
the view of experts and accepted as fact. Consider the following extracts from two of
the English case reports.
The medical evidence establishes that it is not a viable option to allow F
to become pregnant and then consider an abortion. In any event she
might become pregnant again after the abortion… Professor Bicknell
used the word ‘catastrophic’ to describe the psychiatric consequences of
her having a child. She thought there was a 75 per cent chance of
pregnancy, labour and birth putting her progress in recent years back a
very long way.
Re F [1990] at 10
Re HG [1993] considered the proposed sterilisation of an 18 year old woman. Similarly,
the judge found from “expert evidence” that while the woman concerned was at “risk of
sexual relationships”, pregnancy would be detrimental to her.
There is no dispute but that a pregnancy, if continued to term, as
physiologically it probably could be, would be disastrous. There is no
conflict on the evidence with the proposition that T has no knowledge of
sexual matters, no concept of pregnancy, marriage, contraception,
15
NHS Trust v C [2000], Re S [1998], Re HG [1993], Re W [1993], Re F [1990], Re M [1988], T v T
[1988].
16
Re X [1998], Re W [1993], Re F [1990], Re B [1988], Re M [1988], T v T [1988], Re Eve [1986].
17
NHS Trust v C [2000], Re X [1998], Re B [1988], Re D [1976].
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