Birth Violence as Cultural and Medical Practice

Violence during childbirth has been gaining more attention over the past 20 years, with many women and birthers complaining about the circumstances under which they were made to give birth. In a highly medicalized and technologically led birth culture driven by capitalist logics of health care management, birth care can often become violent or be experienced as such. Birth violence can be understood as an assemblage consisting of an accumulation of political failures, bad medical practice, misogyny, and scientific ignorance. Some important typologies of obstetric violence have already been developed by activists and researchers so far; this lecture will discuss these typologies and add to them. It will dive deeper into birth violence as a cultural practice and its meaning about how we care and what we (do not) care about: women’s and birthers’ rights, sexuality, children, motherhood, and medical authority. After engaging with the macro-level it will then follow a few specific cases on the micro-level to see the effects and implications of birth violence.