It’s been happening since the beginning of time. Women stand in the way of their own progress. When some women fought for the right to vote, other women opposed women suffrage – even going so far as releasing pamphlets like this one stating all the reasons why women should not have the right to vote. Yeah…. WOMEN did that.
When some women fought for the right to hold a job without being subjected to sexual harassment and sexual violence, other women told those ladies to sit down and shut up, because they had jobs and they should count themselves lucky.
And while some women fight for the right to safe, legal access to family planning services, other women fight to criminalize any woman who needs or wants these services.
But today, there is a newly realized (but not newly practiced) form of social humiliation and injustice for women: Birth Rape. And like with everything else, some women want to make these women victims all over again by denying that such thing exists.
Birth rape is a term that many women apply to the treatment they may have suffered under the care of a maternity provider who forced, coerced, and/or threatened their way into a woman’s genitals without her expressed permission. Make no mistake – this is a criminal act. A woman whose provider performs procedures on her against her will is in violation of the law and the AMA and ACOG Codes of Ethics. It is grounds for criminal assault charges, malpractice filings and loss of license. Even in cases where a women may not suffer any long-term physical damage from the act, these incidents can cause extreme physical and emotional trauma on a woman. These events can cause a woman to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or suffer from long term anxiety, depression, and fear. These events should not be tolerated by a civilized society.
But they are. Why? Because some women refuse to acknowledge the suffering. Instead, they blame the mother for her feelings. They tell her “at least you had a healthy baby, who cares what happened in the process?” They so eloquently tell her to “shut the fuck up” when she talks about her genitals being forcibly touched, entered, or even cut open. They tell her that she is not allowed to call what happened to her “rape” – and that her attacker “had the best of intentions” so they couldn’t possibly be to blame. They marginalize her – the way women have always done to other women when they don’t understand, empathize, or care what has been done to them. It is too difficult to see the truth, so they choose not to.
But don’t get me wrong – A woman does not have to experience any negative feelings from a cesarean, or any other type of birth for that matter. Furthermore, a mother does not have to experience any type of forced non-consensual treatment to feel a great sense of loss or depression over an unhappy birth experience. A mother is entitled to feel anything she needs to about the birth she had. It is HER birth. HER feelings. HER right.
But so many women will not allow a mother to have negative feelings about her own birth experience. And of course, this upsets me a great deal. Unrecognized and untreated feelings of loss, depression, and/or violation can send a mother spiraling deeper into an emotional chokehold. Her very real, and very justifiable feelings are invalidated by some uneducated and ignorant voices. She may feel isolated, misunderstood, and shamed. Some women never have children again because they cannot bear to revisit the scene of the attack (i.e. a hospital.) Some women choose to give birth without the supervision of any care provider whatsoever because they cannot trust anyone to keep them safe. Some rise up and empower themselves to achieve a birth experience that helps heal their wounds. And some women try again, only be set up to fail by a system that does not respect their need for bodily integrity or autonomy.
No woman should have to feel violated during her birth. And I will not rest until this very real epidemic has the recognition that every other act of sexual misconduct has. If the suffragists or the Lois Jensens of the world agreed to “Shut the fuck up” because some ignorant women didn’t want to rock the boat, imagine where we’d be today.
Whether you are a doctor who thinks they have the right to violate women’s bodies against their will, or you are another woman who believes that doctors should have the right to do whatever they want to other women, I only have to say this: NO MEANS NO – regardless of the medical degree.
______________________________
If you are a mother who has suffered some form of birth trauma, or unresolved feelings about a negative birth experience, please know that you are not alone. Help is out there. Here are a few resources to help you begin healing:
Solace for Mothers– Healing after Traumatic Childbirth
International Cesarean Awareness Network – Cesarean Recovery and VBAC Support
Citizens for Midwifery – Article on filing a formal complaint against a provider
BirthCut – “The Ax Forgets, the Tree Remembers”
The Unnecesarean – A Resource for the Latest in Maternity News, Studies, and Information
[...] This post was Twitted by nueva_voz [...]