A controversial court that still holds its hearing in private will decide tomorrow whether a pregnant woman with learning difficulties should be forcibly sterilised once she gives birth. Health workers from a local NHS trust and council, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have asked the secretive Court of Protection to decide whether the woman should be forced to have her fallopian tubes cut to stop her falling pregnant again.
The 44-year-old, a former international consultant, opted to take her daughter, 9, out of the immunisation programme run at her private school because she had reservations about the safety of the vaccine. After spending hours researching it and speaking with friends in the medical profession, she decided that not enough was known about the long-term effects of the vaccine, and that her child, who has no medical problems, should not have it.