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Abstract
The twenty-first century continues to witness gynecological abuse in the form of forced sterilizations of minority women. In many parts of the world, states weaponize family planning programs as a form of reproductive policy against poor women and women of color, treating women’s fertility as a drain on the state's resources. The first part of this Article discusses how legal systems around the world do little to provide redress for women who are coerced to undergo certain medical procedures during, before, and after childbirth, and give little consideration to their right to bodily autonomy. The second part of the Article centers on obstetrics to illustrate how women’s bodies remain a site of profound gendered power differentiation. In Latin America, the pervasiveness of abusive practices in obstetric and gynecological care fomented a grassroots childbirth rights advocacy movement. One of Latin America’s first victories was Argentina’s adoption of a legal framework in 2004, which introduced a human rights-based approach to childbirth. Later, in its 2007 law creating a comprehensive framework to protect the “right of women to a life free of violence,” Venezuela included “obstetric violence” in categories of gender-based violence. More recently, the Committee to the U.N. treaty body on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), in its decisions under the Convention’s Optional Protocol, has defined obstetric violence in a way that is now firmly embedded in the normative structure of international law.
Although “obstetric violence” seems on its face to be part of the continuum of disrespect and abuse in obstetric and gynecological care, the CEDAW Committee’s reasoning expressly recognizes that individual instances of obstetric abuse are part of the broader problem of gender-based violence because such abuse erodes women’s autonomy and ability to make decisions about their bodies. This innovation is important because abuse in obstetric and gynecological care, as a category of violence, often eludes lawmaking on violence against women. Naming obstetrics violence is important, as its invisibility could be tied to the historical devaluation of women. The disempowerment and lack of control that women, especially minority women, experience are magnified in cases involving pregnancy and fertility. Only a multifaceted feminist analysis, attentive to issues of race and power, can adequately expose obstetrics violence.
states and all stakeholders to give greater attention to the human rights-based approach to the delivery of obstetric care. The definition of obstetric violence as a subset of gendered violence highlights that it is also a type of structural violence and, therefore, needs to be addressed systemically. In this line of inquiry, I follow Johan Galtung’s introduction to the term structural violence, further illustrated by Paul Farmer who argued that “the arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world,” and that they are violent because “they cause injury to people.”
Repository Citation
Rangita de Silva de Alwis,
Obstetric Violence and Forced Sterilization: Conceptualizing Gender-Based Institutional Violence,
9
U. Pa. J. L. & Pub. Affairs
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jlpa/vol9/iss1/4