ABSTRACT
In an age of anesthesia, choosing to experience avoidable pain challenges convictions about what it is to be human and humane. Voluntary pain —a practice with long religious pedigrees-also provokes questions about the meaning of suffering. In the context of the broader theme of “suffering religion” I address a very particular kind of pain that is now voluntary, at least in North America: the pain of childbirth. In contemporary North America, experiencing the pain of childbirth is more than a simple choice; women who wish to give birth without pain-relieving drugs must often contend with medical authorities, family, and friends who advise them to do otherwise. By considering how and whether childbirth pain fits within the purview of suffering, I explore the vexed relationships among gender, religion, and pain. I suggest that contemporary North American women who choose to undergo the sensations of vaginal childbirth often turn to religious resources to make sense of their pain in a culture that would rather they deny it.2
