How do you feel about 'assumed consent'?

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

Maybe the moral of the story is don't choose a HCP that you cannot trust to respect your wishes?

Sorry, only read up to here, but have to reply to you N2L (and I love you, but feel misunderstood by some of your comments).

THIS is why I am choosing a freebirth. Because there is no health "care" "professional" that I can trust to respect my wishes. Hell, there's no fricken HUSBAND I can trust to respect my wishes. I was cut not because Liebling was going to die, but because I had been bullied into things, my "no"s had not been heeded and the obs reg I had wanted (and had) to shove his hand up my vagina while I was pushing Liebs half-way down and I was "too muscular" and "too tense" for him. I, and most other women in the UK, do not get to choose providers. We can ask the NHS nicely but if they want us somewhere they either bully our DHs into it (as happened to me as I was trying to fight the world for a homebirth for a few months) or say we can have a birth centre IF they agree - but we still need a hospital we may detest because (a) it's closer and (b) the birth centre can decide they don't want you if you're more than a week away from their arbitarily decided and wrong due date (couldn't even get ONE person to listen to me that I didn't have a 4-week cycle, but irregular 5-8 weeks).

I do not feel violated because someone plonked a baby I do not recognise as my relation into my arms. I do not feel violated because a doctor decided surgery was best for me. I feel violated that I tried to discuss risks with the midwives and they ignored me. That they bullied me. That they laughed at me when I said I did not want drugs - then "told you so" when I had them. I feel violated because I said "no, I don't want this" and it was done anyway. I feel violated by a man's hand being shoved up my vagina while I was birthing then he complained about it and sliced me up, despite my wishes, because my husband agreed to it.

If it weren't a hospital, drugging and violating a woman's vagina would be rape. Why does a hospital that I never wanted to go to make it OK?

eta - the after-effects of my mutilation - 2 years before I felt comfortable during sex. Some positions made me scream in pain for 3 years. Even now, I can feel a scar. I hate it. I hate the mutilation that occured to me when I didn't want it. And I have a stupid pap smear tomorrow with someone I don't know and am freaking about it and just wish my period would arrive right now so I can cancel it. The after-effects of my mutilation is that I don't want a potentially life-saving check done on my body. And I know full well from discussing with the nurse who did my last one (who I did know pretty well) that this is not uncommon, but I am the unusual one who just gets on and does it, irrespective of the fear I feel.