What was supposed to be a postpartum checkup turned into immeasurable grief for a 20-year-old Texas woman, when she learned that doctors had sterilized her without her knowledge in September 2023.
Rachel Richnow is suing Christus St. Michael Hospital in Texarkana, she told The Dallas Morning News, after the hospital removed her fallopian tubes during what she believed was a routine C-section.
“It came as a shock. It made me feel helpless, like my body wasn’t my own, like they can just put you under and do whatever they want to,” Richnow told the newspaper.
Richnow’s attorney, Houston-based lawyer Tommy Hastings, said the procedure, a salpingectomy, was added to Richnow’s chart sometime before her C-section. Richnow signed the consent document before she delivered her baby, but they told The Dallas Morning News that “no one at the facility actually explained the procedure to her or doublechecked that she understood what was about to happen.”
Richnow is suing in hopes that hospitals will add more measures to ensure patients fully understand what is happening to their bodies.
Read more at The Dallas Morning News.
