Childbirth: Vulnerability, Violence and Control

On Friday 12 January 2018 there will be a seminar entitled Childbirth: Vulnerability, Violence and Control.  Organised by Camilla Pickles and Jonathan Herring, it will bring together experts from the UK and internationally to explore issues around abuse and violence during pregnancy.  Contributors include: Susan Ayers, Karen Brennan, Soo Downe, Sara Cohen Shabot, Imogen Goold, Jonathan Herring, Samantha Halliday, Maureen Kelley, Elselijn Kingma, Camilla Pickles, Jessica Rucell, Lisa Forsberg, and Elizabeth Prochaska.

In 2014 the World Health Organization released a statement directed at preventing and eliminating disrespectful and abusive treatment during facility based childbirth. It recognised that–

disrespectful and abusive treatment during childbirth in facilities have included outright physical abuse, profound humiliation and verbal abuse, coercive or unconsented medical procedures (including sterilization), lack of confidentiality, failure to get fully informed consent, refusal to give pain medication, gross violations of privacy, refusal of admission to health facilities, neglecting women during childbirth to suffer life-threatening, avoidable complications, and detention of women and their newborns in facilities after childbirth due to an inability to pay. Among others, adolescents, unmarried women, women of low socio-economic status, women from ethnic minorities, migrant women and women living with HIV are particularly likely to experience disrespectful and abusive treatment. (References omitted.)

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. This project is focused on childbirth and how this area of human experience and interaction can be a source of vulnerability, violence and/or control for those giving birth and for those providing obstetric services. The purpose of the project is to explore, unpack and offer multidisciplinary insights regarding the notions of vulnerability, violence and/or control during childbirth, in a broad sense.

Sadly there are no more places available at the seminar, but an edited collection to be published by Routledge will emerge.

Funding for the seminar has been provided by the Law Faculty’s Research Support Fund and the British Academy.