ABSTRACT
In F v West Berkshire HA [1989] 2 All ER 545, the woman was aged 36 and severely mentally impaired. She had the verbal capacity of a child aged two and the general mental capacity was of a child aged four or five. Since the age of 14, she had been a voluntary in-patient at a mental hospital controlled by the defendant health authority. She had formed a sexual relationship with a male patient, P. There was medical evidence that, from a psychiatric point of view, it would be disastrous for her to become pregnant and since there were serious objections to all ordinary methods of contraception, either because she would be unable to use them effectively or because of a risk to her physical health, the medical staff in charge of F decided that the best course of action would be for her to be sterilised. Her mother had to act as her next friend because F’s disability meant she was incapable of giving a legally valid consent to the operation. F’s mother sought a declaration from the court under the Rules of the Court that the absence of F’s consent would not make sterilisation of F an unlawful act.
