ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on recent debates on human rights and development to discuss the case of reproductive rights and midwifery activism as part of the broader mobilization for the humanization of birth and against obstetric violence in Latin America and Mexico. On the basis of postcolonial reading, my analysis shows how human rights continue to form a significant contentious and constructed terrain among women in the Global South. The mobilization for the humanization of birth and against obstetric violence indicates how the clinical developmental view of reproductive rights is challenged by these activists as not safeguarding the rights of women during birth. In Mexico, this campaign is essentially linked to the struggle to bring back and strengthen midwifery as a way of ensuring improved honoring of human rights in birth. Yet, also complicated postcolonial relationships and tensions emerge in relation to Indigeneity. The chapter suggests that postcolonial midwifery might be challenged by Indigenous rights movements in the near future, thus entailing the need to weave reproductive rights into Indigenous rights in an unprecedented way. The chapter concludes by outlining pending issues for postcolonial analysis of midwiferies, particularly in terms of women’s leadership and societal role, nation building, territory and rights.
