Obstetric Violence: A Hidden Form of Abuse Against Women

And it’s far more common than you might suspect

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Even though my kids are all in their twenties now, I still remember going to new mother groups where we told our birthing stories to one another. We whispered about which obstetricians to avoid, the strange ideas some of our husbands and doctors held, and the way our bosses assumed we would never come back. In even lower voices, some of us mentioned aspects of labor that were so wrong, they seemed abusive.

During the birth of my first child, I distinctly smelled alcohol on the obstetrician’s breath. It was Christmas Eve, and the hospital was on skeleton staff; I had not previously met this doctor. He was one of the many obstetricians who practiced in the large group I had been seeing.

When I mentioned my observation to the nurse, she waved her hand in the air dismissively. What choice did I have? I had already labored for twenty-one hours; they were short-handed, and I wasn’t exactly in a position to fight, neither literally nor figuratively. He botched my son’s circumcision. (It required repair later.) So, it was no surprise when I received notice in mid-January that this doctor was retiring.

While we may have whispered about these situations two decades ago, we have, thankfully, evolved to…