Overview

This Sharp Talk will focus on thinking obstetric violence as a term that brings together experiences of mistreatments and abuse in obstetric care and calls for reflection on the medicalization of the parturient body and the institutionalization of childbirth, the need to regain couples' leading role in discussions of maternal and reproductive health. The session will also include the presence of the Nascer em Coimbra movement, created in the city by a group of people focused on promoting the humanization of childbirth and information in the field of sexual and reproductive rights who, among other activities, began to organize roundtables about births during the pandemic. 

The session will be led by Catarina Barata and Monalisa Nascimento dos Santos Barros.

"Don't be touchy-feely!" Perspectives, speeches and representations about experiences of obstetric violence, by Catarina Barata (ICS-UL)

Obstetric violence is a term coined by Latin American activists at the beginning of the 21st century to describe mistreatments and abuse in the context of obstetric care. It takes a variety of forms, from verbal and physical maltreatment to pregnant women, women in labour and those who have recently given birth, to less obvious forms of coercion and symbolic violence. At issue is the integrity of the woman in her various dimensions.
In the last decade, OV has been framed as a human rights issue, a consequence of the medicalization of childbirth and the manifestation of gender structural violence. The restriction of individual rights as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated and made abuses in the midst of obstetric care, already common before the pandemic, more visible.
In the world of activism for women's reproductive rights, the need for a paradigm shift in the context of obstetric care has been advocated, with the recognition of women's agency in their own childbirth, their right to self-determination, and the review of medical practices not based on scientific evidence.
This session will present a reflection on the first results of an ethnographic research on perspectives, discourses and representations on obstetric violence in Portugal, focusing on the links of Portuguese activism with the international context and artistic tools as a form of expression and communication.

Nascer em Coimbra, by Monalisa Nascimento dos Santos Barros (State University of Southwest Bahia)

The Nascer em Coimbra movement intends to restore protagonism to women and couples in the discussions of maternal and reproductive health, including in the current discussion about the new maternity to be built in Coimbra. In this sense, it intends to create a feminist position anchored in the good practices recommended by the World Health Organization in relation to the monitoring of pregnancies and births.

This intervention will address the emergence of obstetrics as a field of knowledge and the field dispute with traditional midwives; the exclusion of the issue of maternity by feminist movements; the great medicalization of the body that occurred with the institutionalization of births; the expropriation of the body due to this medicalization process; and the complicity of feminist movements in this expropriation. In addition, the discussion on the construction of the new maternity hospital in Coimbra, which has focused more on the location and less on the desirable functioning of this new structure, will be addressed.

Bio notes

Catarina Barata - PhD candidate in Anthropology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL), with a research on perspectives, discourses and representations about experiences of obstetric violence. She is a full member of the Portuguese Association for Women's Rights in Pregnancy and Childbirth (APDMGP).

Monalisa Nascimento dos Santos Barros - holds a degree in Psychology from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil (1987), a Master's Degree in Applied Population Research - University of Exeter, England (1997), and a PhD in Psychology - Studies of Subjectivity from the Federal Fluminense University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2015). She is joint professor at the State University of Southwest Bahia, working in medical and psychology courses, and is currently developing a postdoctoral fellowship on perinatal mental health at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra. She has experience in the Humanization of Childbirth and Birth. Member of the Brasil GentleBirth team.

_{Featured image: © Catarina Barata}

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This activity will be accessible through the Zoom platform and will be limited to number of available

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88907027603

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