ABSTRACT
English courts were twice faced with the dilemma of needle phobia; both cases relating to women who had consented to urgent caesarean section and explicitly wanted their babies to be born safely. In one, L was in full-term obstructed labour, while MB had a footling breach presentation in a 33-week-old baby. In the first case, the judge ruled that L had demonstrated capacity to consent for the operation. But he found that her extreme needle phobia amounted to an involuntary compulsion, disabling her from weighing and balancing treatment information, and thus removing her capacity to refuse the procedure. The Court of Appeal accepted that panic, irrationality and indecisiveness may be symptoms of incapacity, these do not amount to a loss of capacity. The court reiterated the proposition that needle phobia amounts to an involuntary compulsion, asserting that temporary factors, such as confusion, shock, fatigue, pain or drugs, or panic induced by fear might erode or destroy capacity’.
