The International Day for the Eradication of Violence against Women was recently celebrated, a form of violence that is exercised against women for the fact of being so. Some groups invite us to reflect on the existence of a form of sexist violence that they call Obstetric Violence.
Obstetric Violence
The Obstetric Violence , according to these groups and the legislation of countries like Argentina, it consists of the appropriation of the woman's body and the process of childbirth by medical professionals, considering all births as pathological, turning women into patients automatically and performing Routine medical and pharmacological acts without allowing the parturient to participate actively in decisions about her own body.
In this model that some groups and the legislation of some countries consider violence, women cease to be able to make informed decisions and they apply protocols that prevent them from moving, eating, drinking, deciding the posture in dilation or expulsion, the puncture is punctured. bag or episiotomy is applied without real medical necessity and medications that accelerate childbirth causing problems in the natural process that could happen normally if not intervened are introduced in a protocol.
Can childbirth care involve a way of violence?
Until recently this type of attention was normal in Spain and was lived, by some women, as an aggression towards their people, together with this, to a dehumanized and even aggressive treatment, with very hard words and attitudes.
This reaches its highest levels in cases of women who requested less medical attention, women suffering from caesarean sections and the worst, women who must give birth to a dead child or who dies in childbirth.
In addition, separating babies from their mothers without need is also a form of institutionalized violence that can, mother and child, live in a traumatic way.
My personal experience
Me, and I tell you from My personal experience, if I felt violent and mistreated in my birth. They treated me like a silly girl, they didn't say my name but a generic “Mary”, crowds came in and out that didn't show up or say they came to see, there were at least ten students when they broke the bag and nobody told me that they could deny me , without explaining just what they were doing, without allowing my husband in the moments of intervention.
They applied me protocols that I know are unnecessary, such as breaking my bag or cutting my baby, they medicated me with oxytocin sometimes causing me to get wild contractions and then lowering the flow, without explaining anything and without the possibility of anesthesia because there was no anesthesia available, and this, when he appeared, was late because he was in expulsion.
They took my son without letting me touch him, they did not inform me of the real reasons for the induction, which today I am sure was not necessary, much less explained medical reasons for them to take him, as there were none.
After putting a thousand obstacles to get the full medical report I have analyzed it with the help of gynecologists and not all the data of what they did to me or the interventions are justified. It even says that they made me epidural and they couldn't do it because when they went to prick me, I started pushing uncontrollably and in five minutes my son was born.
Even when they took me to wear an epidural that was late but that with an induction from 0 is normally predictable, they threw me a rage and called me whining because, after ten hours immobilized and dilated now I know that 9 or 10, I could not move alone And I say 10 because when I arrived at the delivery room, when they were supposed to get epidural, I was already in full and in expulsion.
I felt humiliated, like an animal taken to the slaughterhouse, physically and emotionally abused. A birth should not be like that. It took me years to revive my birth and verbalize negative feelings, fear and loneliness, pain and the way I felt mistreated.
Changes in the delivery care model
Today, in the hospital where my son was born, they now apply the kangaroo method at birth as it is clear that it is better for babies. Today they would not have taken him and I would not have lived those moments of loneliness and fear, without knowing if he was dying or something bad was happening without even having touched him. In an hour nobody appeared to tell me anything nor did they inform my partner.
Although birth care has not improved much in this center, at least babies are not taken. And in other hospitals, births are already treated more respectfully.
The extension of protocols for normal delivery care In many hospitals they should be a big change, but there is still strong resistance in some centers and there are women who still feel they are being treated badly in their deliveries, and especially if there is an unnecessary caesarean section, or if your child has died. The change of protocols is no consolation, but hope for the future.
Is there obstetric violence?
I leave you, to illustrate this issue, the video of the short film Itziar Bollaín made to denounce this form of treatment or abuse that women continue to suffer in their births. We had already seen it in Babies and more, but I think it is worth remembering.
Thus, from my experience, from yours, from the legislation of some countries that already contemplate this term such as Argentina, from the current changes in the care model, I ask you, do you consider that there is obstetric violence And what is a form of violence against women?
