Dr Liz Sutton1
1Central Adelaide Local Health Network, Adelaide, Australia, 2Monash University, Clayton, Australia, 3University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
Biography:
Liz is an aspiring comedian, having had a short run at the Adelaide Fringe (of one show) which even her partner of 27 years had to admit was very funny. Liz is strongly committed to issues of reproductive justice for women/people ensuring that that they have agency as they become mothers/parents. As her day job, Liz is the Director of Research at Central Adelaide Local Health Network, and an adjunct Associate Professor at University of South Australia (Faculty of Clinical and Health Sciences). She also is a Research Affiliate at Monash University where she completed her PhD in 2019.
Abstract:
The term obstetric violence was developed to describe the brutalisation of women during birth, having its origins in the Latin Americas. It has, however, seemingly been appropriated by some health care professionals outside of this region to suggest that women are experiencing obstetric violence when they are offered (and take up) interventions that interfere with ‘normal birth’. This presentation will consider obstetric violence in the context of intervention in birth in various settings and how the disingenuous use of this term by some health care professionals only further fails birthing women. This presentation will also contemplate how failure to act upon a woman’s request for intervention can be equally as violent and harmful to women as acts visited upon women which they may have wished to avoid prior to birth. At issue here is how we prepare women for birth and how we respond to them when they change their plans in labour. Clinicians must provide unbiased information to women and deliver it with kindness. There is no room for ideology in the delivery suite and framing interventions that may provide a better outcome for women and their babies as a form of birthing violence, harms women. It does this by possibly limiting their options, and leaving them feeling disappointed in their birthing efforts when they had to engage those interventions. Clarity is needed in the use of the term obstetric violence and the actions that it encompasses.