This book is inspired by a statement released by the World Health Organization directed at preventing and eliminating disrespectful and abusive treatment during facility-based childbirth.
Exploring the nature of vulnerability during childbirth, and the factors which make childbirth a site for violence and control, the book looks at the role of law in the regulation of professional intervention in childbirth. The WHO statement and other published work on ‘mistreatment’, ‘obstetric violence’, ‘birth trauma’, ‘birth rape’, and ‘dehumanised care’ all point to the presence of vulnerability, violence, and control in childbirth. This collected edition explores these issues in the experience of those giving birth, and for those providing obstetric services. It further offers insights regarding legal avenues of redress in the context of this emerging area of concern. Using violence, vulnerability, and control as a lens through which to consider multiple facets of the law, the book brings together innovative research from an interdisciplinary selection of authors.
The book will appeal to scholars of law and legal academics, specifically in relation to tort, criminal law, medical law, and human rights. It will also be of interest to postgraduate scholars of medical ethics and those concerned with gender studies more broadly.
Author(s): Camilla Pickles, Jonathan Herring
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
1 ‘Amigas, sisters: We’re being gaslighted’: obstetric violence and epistemic injustice
2 Practices of silencing: birth, marginality and epistemic violence
3 Posttraumatic stress disorder following childbirth
4 Identifying the wrong in obstetric violence: lessons from domestic abuse
5 Midwives and midwifery: the need for courage to reclaim vocation for respectful care
6 Health system accountability in South Africa: a driver of violence against women?
7 Human rights law and challenging dehumanisation in childbirth: a practitioner’s perspective
8 Leaving women behind: the application of evidence-based guidelines, law, and obstetric violence by omission
9 Childbirth, consent, and information about options and risks
10 Court-authorised obstetric intervention: insight and capacity, a tale of loss
11 Obstetric violence through a fiduciary lens
12 Reflections on criminalising obstetric violence: a feminist perspective
Afterword
Index
