A recent ProPublica investigation revealed how two Florida women, Cherise Doyley and Brianna Bennet, were forced via a judge-ordered mandate to birth their children through C-sections, overriding their wishes for vaginal births and highlighting a new and concerning element to Florida’s fetal-personhood agenda.
In September of 2024, during her twelfth hour of labor, nurses instructed Cherise Doyle to cover up as they brought in a tablet showing a virtual meeting with a team of lawyers and a robed judge. The hospital had sought an emergency petition for a mandated C-section as doctors thought the unborn child’s life was at risk. Cherise, a professional birthing doula, had experienced three prior C-section deliveries and was against having another due to past hemorrhaging complications. Throughout the three-hour hearing, in which Cherise had no lawyer or advocate present, she explained that she understood the risk of uterine rupture was less than 2% and clearly stated she did not want a C-section. Ultimately, her wishes were dismissed, and the judge ruled that Cherise had no choice; if anything went wrong at all, she would be receiving a C-section. After the baby’s heart rate dropped, Cherise was wheeled into surgery and forcibly underwent the C-section.
A year and a half earlier, Brianna Bennet faced an eerily similar situation. Brianna had also undergone three prior C-sections, and after experiencing intense complications from those procedures, she wanted a vaginal birth for her fourth child. Twenty-four hours into her active labor, fifteen people crowded into her room for a virtual meeting with a judge. Despite voicing her wishes and concerns centered around her past experiences with C-sections, emphasizing the lack of help she would have if incapacitated in such a way again, the judge voted in favor of the hospital’s petition. Brianna was forced to have a C-section and suffered emotional trauma afterwards.
Generally, the United States recognizes the constitutional right to bodily integrity, which includes the right to refuse medical treatment. However, in the post-Dobbs world, the country now sees no national consensus as to whether bodily integrity extends to pregnant patients or if fetal rights can supersede; Florida is a state that upholds the latter.
Florida’s stance on restricted bodily integrity for pregnant people is largely a result of the state’s fetal personhood legislation and policy ambitions, including the Heartbeat Protection Act passed in 2024, which criminalizes abortions performed after six weeks. Religious and moral beliefs stand as a large motivating factor behind these practices, but some believe that a more malicious goal is the strongest undercurrent of these court-mandated C-sections.
Florida relies heavily on private equity for its healthcare centers and investors remain hungry for profits. A state law passed in 2025 allows doctors to deliver children via C-sections outside of hospitals; critics of this law point to the role it plays in circulating more money in the private equity-backed healthcare system while simultaneously taking patients away from the few public hospitals left in the state. Because C-section patient costs are, on average, 85% higher than those from a vaginal birth, sexual health advocates worry that this law’s primary goal sees C-sections as a way to generate more profits at the expense of patient safety.
If these fears are founded, it would raise the question of whether hospitals’ petitions for C-sections in cases like Cherise and Brianna’s are truly made in the patient’s best interest or if hospital investors are casting a shadow over these types of decisions. What’s even more concerning is that Cherise and Brianna’s stories aren’t outliers; pregnant people in other states are experiencing similar judicial control over their bodies in the name of fetal personhood via judge-ordered C-sections. With the number of private equity-backed healthcare facilities and hospitals growing nationally every year, this newly emerging legislature and judicial coalition may be building a new profit-churning machine at the expense of pregnant people’s health, safety, autonomy, and constitutional rights.