by Rachelle Chadwick
Reproductive and obstetric harms have not typically been included as areas of concern in critical and/or feminist criminology or zemiology studies. However, since the 2000s, obstetric violence (healthcare related abuse during pregnancy and birthing) has been recognized as a legal wrong and form of violence against women in several Latin and Central American countries (e.g. Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Panama). Efforts are also underway across a range of diverse global contexts (e.g. United States, South Africa, Australia, Spain) to name and strategise against this form of gendered harm and abuse. While legal attention has only recently turned to the issue of obstetric violence, feminist sociologists and anthropologists have long been engaged in trying to draw attention to the violations (of autonomy, dignity, personhood) that often occur during childbirth. As a young PhD student in South Africa, I was drawn to doing research in this area after reading British sociologist, Ann Oakley’s (1980) ‘Women Confined: Towards a Sociology of Childbirth’, in which she explores the pervasive distress that many women experience during and after birth. This prompted me to conduct research in South Africa exploring birth experiences across a range of race and class divides. My doctoral work on South African birth narratives was conducted before ‘obstetric violence’ was coherently named as a global concern and form of gender violence.
In the last ten years or so there has been an outpouring of research, activist mobilisation, and feminist writing on obstetric violence. As a result, international bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN) have issued statements and reports on the issue. For example, in 2014, the WHO identified mistreatment during birth as a cause for transnational concern and in 2019, the UN released its report on a human-rights approach to obstetric violence. In various parts of Africa, efforts are also underway to tackle the problem.