Stop forced C-sections! Justice for Cherise Doyley and Brianna Bennett.

The petition to University of Florida Health (UF Health) and Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare reads:

Cherise Doyley and Brianna Bennett deserved better. Every pregnant patient deserves better. We urge you to:

• Stop forcing pregnant people to have cesarean births.
• Take all necessary steps to end discriminatory policies and practices based on sex, gender, pregnancy status, and race.
• Discipline the doctors and hospital staff who ignored Doyley and Bennett’s concerns and coerced them to undergo a court-ordered C-section against their will.
• Publicly acknowledge and provide financial relief for the harm UF Health caused to the Doyley family and Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare inflicted on the Bennett family.  

Pregnant patients are not second-class citizens. Their bodies, their voices, and their rights deserve full respect.

Cherise Doyley was 12 hours into labor at University of Florida Health (UF Health) Jacksonville when a nurse walked in with a bedsheet and told her to cover up. A tablet was wheeled to her bedside. A judge, flanked by lawyers, doctors, and hospital staff, appeared on the screen.

Doyley, a professional birth doula, midwife in training, and mother of three who had previous negative experiences with cesarean section surgery – including a hemorrhage that landed her back in the hospital – had made an informed decision to try for a vaginal birth. She understood the risks. She had done her research. She had the legal and moral right to decide what happened to her own body.

But UF Health didn't care. They went to court – while she was in labor –  to take that decision away from her.

A year and a half earlier, the exact same cruel injustice happened to Brianna Bennett at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. Bennett is a Black woman like Doyley who was also forced to have a C-section against her will. This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern. It’s what happens when states grant rights to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses, also known as “fetal personhood.” And it shows just how quickly these dangerous, bad-faith laws will be used to strip a pregnant person of control over their own body and health choices.

Join us and our partners at Pregnancy Justice, Elephant Circle, If/When/How, and the Center for Reproductive Rights in demanding UF Health and Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare stop forcing pregnant people to have C-sections against their will.