Having a doctor perform surgery on you without permission – literally cutting into you while you protest – is the stuff of which horror movies are made. Yet that's just what happened to 35-year-old Rinat Dray when a doctor at Staten Island University Hospital performed a C-section on the Brooklyn mother, against her will and verbal protests.

Her right to bodily integrity and freedom was taken away with a swipe of a pen – the director of maternal and fetal medicine, Dr James J Ducey, wrote in Dray's medical records, "I have decided to override her refusal to have a C-section." Dray is suing the hospital and doctors for malpractice.

It sounds like a no-brainer – you can't force someone to have surgery. But thanks to American policy that trumps "fetal rights" over women's personhood, Dray's case may not be as clear cut as it seems.

We already know that the C-section rate is a problem in America – rates have increased 50% in the last 10 years, and American women have them at more than double the rate recommended by the World Health Organization. Certainly many women have shared their stories of being cajoled or pushed into C-sections they didn't want. But it's not just implicit pressure that women feel: explicit violations like the one that happened to Dray have been happening for decades.

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women compiled a report of 413 cases between 1973 and 2005 in which pregnant women – strictly because they were pregnant – had their physical liberty infringed upon (including 30 incidents of forced C-sections or other medical interventions).

When Laura Pemberton refused a C-section in Florida in 1996, for example, she was taken into custody by a sheriff and state's attorney who showed up at her house. Her legs were strapped and she was forced to go to the hospital for surgery. Tellingly, she was given no representation but a lawyer was appointed to her fetus. When Pemberton later sued for civil rights violations, the US district court in Florida ruled against her, saying that her rights were outweighed by the state's interest "in preserving the life of the unborn child".

For women who managed to avoid forced surgery, there are other nightmares that await. Melissa Rowland was pregnant with twins when she rejected her doctor's advice to have a C-section. After she gave birth to a girl and a stillborn boy, she was arrested and charged with murder. (Treating women as criminals for what they do during pregnancy is not uncommon – Dray was told that refusing the C-section was child abuse and that her child would be taken away from her.)

The underlying ethos of all these cases is the idea that once a woman is pregnant, her personhood comes second to that of her fetus. It's the same argument the anti-choice movement uses to limit women's reproductive rights and the ideology that makes pregnant women – whether they're planning to keep the pregnancy or not – second class citizens.

I hope Dray wins her case, and that our country will start to recognize the humanity of pregnant women, instead of just cutting them open when we disagree with their personal medical decisions. But I'm not holding my breath.