ABSTRACT

Birth violence has been reported since the 1950s, with Euro-American feminists at the forefront of activism, research and debate in this area. However, the rise of the concept of 'obstetric violence' in contexts of the Global South has disrupted depoliticized readings of birth violence. A range of terms have been used to refer to these subtle, often imperceptible forms of violence, including: structural, symbolic, objective or 'soft' violence. Some low-income women enacted positions of passivity without question or complaint. For these women, passivity and powerlessness were 'normal' during labor/birth in Maternal Obstetric Unit (MOU) settings. Low-income women utilizing public sector services did not expect to be able to exercise choices in relation to mode of birth, pain relief and interventions. Public sector birth assemblages were sociomaterial spaces in which bodily shame was often reinforced. Biomedicalized understandings of laboring bodies as depersonalized objects produced further entanglements in which women were disregarded as embodied persons.