A Florida courtroom recently reached into a delivery room and helped decide how a woman would give birth — all through a tablet held over her hospital bed. The case, reported by ProPublica, is centered on Cherise Doyley, a Jacksonville doula and mother who was in active labor when hospital staff launched an emergency virtual hearing to push her into a cesarean surgery that she was vehemently against not want.

ProPublica shared a brief video snippet of the video online. During Doyley’s labor, she is given a tablet. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says. “Can you hear me okay, ma’am?” says Judge Michael Kalil, appearing over a video conference call, clad in a black robe. Doyle, who appears covered by only a hospital bed sheet and headwrap, is in disbelief as Kalil and several others appear on the call.

Doyley had previously had three C-sections, including one that caused heavy bleeding, and she was set on a vaginal birth after carefully weighing the risks with her family.

Instead, she suddenly found herself facing a judge, hospital lawyers, and doctors on a screen, with no attorney of her own.

C-sections are associated with a higher risk of maternal death compared to vaginal deliveries. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Black women are nearly 25 percent more likely than white women to have unnecessary C-sections.

In Doyley’s case, the hospital argued that her continued labor posed a danger of uterine rupture and threatened the fetus, and the state asked the court to order surgery in the “best interest” of the unborn child. Doyley, a Black woman, told the group of mostly white officials that she felt her rights and her body were being taken over.

Florida law generally gives competent adults the right to refuse medical care, but pregnancy has become the exception.

Judges in the state have backed forced bed rest, confinement in hospitals, and, increasingly, interventions like C-sections in the name of fetal rights.

Advocates and legal experts say these cases reflect a broader push for “fetal personhood,” where embryos and fetuses gain legal status that can override a patient’s choices.

If a court can decide how one woman gives birth from a tablet at her bedside, “When we use the courts to basically strong-arm, bully someone into an unnecessary medical procedure against their will, it’s akin to torture, in my eyes,” Doyley said to ProPublica.