Opiniatrety

I also think that the c-section case is troubling, but (to play devil's advocate for a moment) there might be good reasons from a moral point of view that the woman ought to pursue a c-section. (I realize that you are primarily concerned in the political implications of such a precedent, but if our political views are informed by our moral commitments, (and I think that you would agree with me that they are), then it might be well worth looking to what moral commitments inform this decision--moral commitments that we might not be ready to reject even given this case.

First, what I would like to suggest is that I do not think that what underlies this decision is the view that "a woman who becomes pregnant forfeits control over her own body" as you claim. Instead, (and this argument is coming from an upcoming PhD from Rice University) we could suppose that a pregnant woman has certain moral obligations not only towards her fetus but also towards her future children. And the moral obligation is this. A woman who voluntarily chooses to become pregnant accepts responsibility for protecting her child's vulnerability to harm. And the thought here is that her voluntariliy choosing to conceive a child is sufficient for generating this obligation. (Certain exceptions apply, e.g. life of the mother becomes endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term, etc.) Now, if a woman who chooses to conceive a child is morally obligated to protect that child from harm, then it seems reasonable to say that included in the scope of this obligation is protecting the life of the fetus. Choosing a c-section over vaginal delivery is a case that seems to fall within the scope of this moral obligation. You might disagree with me, and insist on saying that this is a clear violation of a woman's bodily integrity, and that this case illustrates that a woman is expected to forfeit her bodily rights. My response to this would be that in this case, this is only incidentally so. It just so happens that this case required that she ought to concede to a c-section, but not because she is expected (from a moral point of view) to give up a right to her body, but because she is expected to fulfill her moral obligation to protect her child from harm.

A quick FYI--some stats on the risks of c-sections themselves might be relevant to what you think about this case, though if you are outraged by this case on reasons having to do with a woman's bodily autonomy, then I suspect these stats are irrelevant to your case. C-sections have been reported to have fewer complications than vaginal deliveries--but they have complications of their own that are somewhat more serious than the complications associated with vaginal delieveries. (See WebMD for more on this, as well as JAMA and The New England Journal.) C-sections (vs. vaginal deliveries) also present a (negligibly) higher risk that the woman will die from the procedure. And an interesting fun fact: having recognized that the requests for c-sections are climbing (both in the US and abroad) and that c-sections often present fewer delivery complications for women, in 1993 Britain passed a law that allows women to request what kind of delivery they want--though, for financial reasons vaginal deliveries are usually encouraged unless the life of the mother or fetus (or both) are at stake.

At any rate, my point: we might have good moral reasons to require a woman to choose a c-section, and these reasons are also internal to the woman herself if we affirm the moral commitment that women have to their future children--that they ought to protect them from harm.