Obstetric violence is the last socially acceptable form of violence against women

[NibliaBiblia]

Just what the title says.
I was physically forced onto my back in labour. Friend of mine had her waters broken without even being told they were about to do it and then was refused a ceasearean for hours after she said she needed one. One born every minute they just tell women what's going to happen and then do it. Another woman I know was verbally coerced into giving birth on her back in stirrups. Every time someone at work is pregnant somebody asks if they're "allowed" to do xyz.
And then things like cesareans without anaesthesia, cervical exams when the woman is saying to stop, episiotomy without warning, being belittled or spoken down to I haven't heard from women I know personally but definitely do happen.
And when a woman talks about feeling traumatised or violated there's always multiple people popping up to say that's normal, she should count her blessings, she should be grateful, etc.

Which is completely correlated to that percentage of people who don’t react to anaesthesia in the ‘normal way’.

OP you are projecting your own poor experience into some sort of medical epidemic.

We trust doctors to make quick and informed life saving medical decisions. How on earth do we think without medical training while we are in severe pain and distress we would be able to make accurate medical decisions?

Yeah doctors don’t always get it right but they go into each situation wanting the right and best outcome for mother and baby.

This hyperbolic language is also insulting to medical professionals and frankly most women.

It's about procedures done without choice. When my first was born, my OB discussed everything, and gave me choices, even when he knew he'd have to intervene medically - he still talked me through it. DS had a ventouse, but I had no tearing or trauma. Quick birth, quick recovery.

He was away 2nd birth & had his practise partner. Another quick labour & I felt intense pain up my birth canal, and screamed. He'd injected me with local anaesthesia without warning or need. He didn't even finish injecting before DD was in the way! Later, DH told me he didn't have time to stop him inject, but saw the OB take out a tray of cutting instruments & he obviously planned to cut me without permission or reason. DH said he would have stopped him but DD came so fast there wasn't a need. Another birth without tearing, quick recovery. Zero complications. Now that is birth violence. He had no right to plan to cut me without permission or need. I'm still thankful it didn't happen, but how many women did he cut unnecessarily?

In both birth I still had sweeps at a check up without even knowing what they were, and injections for placenta removal. Midwives were fabulous, but rank in the suite still kept them quiet. Which it shouldn't have to!

It's abuse of power. I've met many really lovely midwives, but also lots of cold, angry ones who look down on people giving birth.

Some people love to know when someone's helpless and feel nothing but contempt for them, others just want to help.

When overdue, I was given a 'sweep' without any explanation of what was involved, by a woman who didn't ask for my consent. It was so violent she put me in labour, the day before I was due to be induced (she had decided to just do it, as I was being admitted the night before). The maternity department was full, and I was then left alone for a very rapid childbirth until the baby was nearly out. The midwives were pretty angry I'd advanced so fast, despite my medical history showing it was normal for me.

That was my third birth. The first was so bad I can hardly bear to think of it, the midwife shouting at me throughout and often leaving me alone. I only know if can be different because my second was such a good experience - a midwife who listened to me when I said I gave birth quickly, and treated me with respect throughout. And it was by far the most painful and difficult birth as well. But I felt supported and like I could cope.

So yes, I'd agree with you. I had to have an intimate exam done recently and the doctor was cis male, asked my consent and explained everything in detail before and during. He asked if I wanted a chaperone, but when I said yes had already picked up the phone, assuming I would.

The maternity department doesn't always do that. They put the baby first and you nowhere, rarely asking if something can be done before they do it. When I told my first midwife I was an abuse survivor, her reply was: "Why wasn't that on your Birth Plan?!"

Fwiw I don't think the midwives and doctors doing this stuff are always setting out to do harm. Most of the time they probably think they're helping.
The midwives who spent around twenty minutes attempting to pry my legs open and physically force me onto my back had no idea they'd done anything wrong. When i eventually gave in they documented that I'd consented - and they believed it.
But if i was in a sexual situation with a man and he spent twenty minutes trying to force my legs open, and I eventually gave in and let him do whatever he'd decided to do, nobody would be under any illusion that that was consent.

Considering that on this very site, multiple posters advocate for women being forced into hospital against their will to give birth, or say they should be physically forced to undergo procedures they don’t consent to during labour, I’m surprised anyone would question the dehumanising attitude that exists towards women during labour and birth. Not all health professionals are like that of course, but too many see a woman as losing her rights and capacity just because she’s pregnant/in labour.

Ultimately, women should always have bodily autonomy in regards to their medical care if they have capacity (which they generally do), which includes the right to refuse life-saving procedures, or procedures that might be safer for the baby.

Being well-informed about risks and benefits of certain interventions and procedures in a neutral way prior to birth is very important, I think, to avoid scaremongering and to give women the opportunity to confidently make choices for themselves. But at the end of the day, if a woman is in her right mind/has capacity, she should always have the right to say ‘no’ and be listened to, even if that means she or the baby die. That’s her decision to make, for better or ill.

We wouldn’t pin men who have capacity down to a bed and force procedures on them against their will, refuse them pain relief, deny their own perception of their pain, or violate their bodily orifices without consent. We shouldn’t do that to women.

Reminds me that when I gave birth the main hospital in Glasgow had single rooms for all patients. Except new mothers.

the one time that you are at your absolute most vulnerable and you’re expected to share your space with lots of strangers (yeah, the 4 visitors for the next bed are all strangers)

Are you actually kidding? You’re totally disregarding this woman’s lived experience

In my NCT group there were three out of eight women who were all articulate and good at self advocacy, fairly posh, cultural capital etc, also less likely to be discriminated against and minoritised as they were white, straight, neurotypical, able bodied etc etc. Five of us had relatively Ok times but these three had birth stories including the most jaw droppingly unfair, abusive, non consensual treatment. Leaving them with trauma and one with post natal depression. And yet none of it "bad enough" to mean anything was done about it.

One of them said "I could not speak for the pain at one point, so I tried to show the midwife just by glaring at her with my eyes that if I was in my full power, there would be no way she could ever get away with treating me like that." Another's baby was actually injured during birth partly due to the labour being so mishandled it slowed down and the baby had to be ventoused and had a shoulder injury. Of course these things happen but in this instance the things that happened to the mother in labour clearly contributed to the outcome.

I believe any woman who has poor birth experiences. This was a bog standard NCT group in London hospitals.

It is true both that the majority of HCPs mean well and want to do good not harm, AND that the system normalises a level of violence, gaslighting and patronising dismissal that we should not have to put up with.

Another issue I found with my hosptial births is that I am a slow labourer but they needed the room. So interventions were carried out that were not necessary, but got me to deliver more quickly.
And of course no intervention is without risk - one of my sons suffered some hearing problems as a result unfortunately.
My home birth was very much "hands off."

@NibliaBiblia you are fundamentally right. There is something wrong with how birthing is managed in this country. The level of adverse incidents, and the astronomical amounts the NHS pays to broken families as a result of poor care, are evidence of this.

I was brought up in a country where there is proper, obgyn care around birth. I then moved to the U.K. and had two traumatic births. I was not prepared adequately for my first birth (forced to have a water birth against my will and denied pain relief). My second birth was premature, induced, traumatic and understaffed. When my son was in NICU he received appalling care; to this day, I feel like I saved his life in spite of the care he received, not because of it.

My DCs are teens now, but the trauma I had in hospital affects me on a daily basis. This has defined my life in a way that is difficult to acknowledge, even to my closest friends. In both cases there were a catalogue of errors in my care. I’m lucky that I am fluent, professional and argumentative by trade - I’m convinced this is what saved me and my second baby. So many mothers are not so lucky.

I know I am preaching in the desert, but I think we need to look at the entire maternity care system, scrap midwives, and reintroduce obgyn care. I have completely lost faith in midwifery care as a vector to delivering science based care and good medical outcomes. I think British women deserve better than the appalling outcomes we have been getting for decades.

Just to offer my support to those of you have had these experiences. ‘Obstetric violence’ is a jarring phrase that feels hyperbolic until you read what some of you have experienced and what else can you call it?

Many men who sexually harass women don’t see it as violence, some don’t even mean to cause harm I imagine. Does that mean it is not violence? Some of the dismissing views expressed here are quite alarming.

Can you share the country you're from where they're better at this? I was under the impression this was an issue the world over, even if it's possibly worse here than some places. I'm so so sorry you've suffered so badly - as I am about everyone else on the thread. I don't have kids myself but read about this issue as a teenager and it was one of the reasons I chose to remain child free (to be fair there were many other reasons too). My experience of health care professionals in general has been pretty terrible and I don't struggle to believe the stories at all. I'm horrified at some of the responses.

Thank you to the posters who offered support 😊 I disassociated from my body as I was being operated on without adequate anaesthetic and it gave me ptsd and took years for me to get past. Imagine if they had listened to me telling them I could feel everything before they started cutting me open, I’d be astonished if that routinely happens when you’re having your appendix out or some gallstones removed. My dh has had many medical procedures in the same hospital and the level of care and compassion and pain relief he received is like he was in a different world to me.

It’s not going to improve with the narrative that it was acceptable for these things to happen because no one died. We don’t look back on people having their leg sawn off after a shot of whiskey and think it would be ok to do that now in the cash strapped nhs as they probably won’t die. There should be no need in modern times to be using the justification of well if no one dies then it’s ok to perform medical procedures without consent or coerced consent (your baby will die if we don’t do x, y or z) or without proper pain relief or medical treatment.

It is similar to sexual violence in that because it is seen as primarily effecting women, it is seen as kind of how things just are, that this is what we are here for and we should just endure pain and having things done to our bodies we don’t want as what is the purpose of women if not to provide sex and babies? Why does it matter what we think of it and how we feel about it? And as this is the feminist chat area on mn we should be able to discuss it rather than the glib ‘well everyone in the nhs is trying their best and birthing women are just primadonnas wanting special treatment’ narrative I’d have expected to see on AIBU.

I find it really disturbing when this sort of behaviour is justified with the idea that birth is dangerous. Disrespect, abuse, medical battery and coercive practices do not make women or babies safer. Appropriate medical care makes women and babies safer. We should all be able to access maternity care without being subjected to obstetric violence.

People who are sceptical about obstetric violence would do well to read the numerous maternity reports that have come out over the past few years into Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, East Kent and Nottingham. The scale of the hostility and cruelty towards mothers documented in these reports is shocking.

A quote from a mother in the East Kent report:
“She said sorry for your loss, but our baby was dead and there were other babies who were still living that she needed to attend to.”

From the Nottingham report:

"Staff interviews report a concerning approach to the effective triaging of mothers. Toxic cultures and poor behaviours demonstrated by senior staff is thematic across the whole period of this Review. Midwives detailed entrenched ways of behaving that were unprofessional and cruel to women."

On the question of caesareans being performed without anaesthetic, this is also a quote from a mother in the East Kent report:

“I lay down on the table and they started to do the cold spray, straight away I could feel it … I kept saying I can feel this … they didn’t listen to me, I said this about four or five times to the team, I can feel this, it’s not right. They didn’t listen … They carried on, obviously, to cut me open. I could feel it all. My left side was slightly numb, I could feel everything on my right side. I felt the knife going in; I started to get hot and I could feel the blood draining from my face. I started to really panic and remember trying to push them off me … I felt everything from there on, it was just an absolute nightmare.”

That’s exactly what happened to me in a completely different hospital and not part of an inquiry. I was told that it was very rare and wasn’t something they could do anything about or know it was going to happen before it did. Obviously me telling them I could feel everything and them telling me I couldn’t wasn’t enough for them to know it was happening. Arseholes. And it was a massive team of medical professionals in a theatre - not one bad apple burnt out midwife.

So sorry this happened to you. There was a piece in the New York Times that looked at this and found it was much more common than previously believed:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/podcasts/the-daily/anesthesia-c-sections-patient-pain.html

Afraid it's behind a paywall and I don't have a share token.

Doctors (particularly in maternity) will often tell patients that something is "very rare" when it isn't.

https://pca.st/podcast/18e35510-f314-013b-f51f-0acc26574db2
The podcast is available on other platforms.

This is jaw-dropping. Sounds like there was a twenty-minute physical fight going on. Didn't anyone try to stop the fighting? It sounds like you didn't want an examination at that time, is that correct? I'm having a hard time imagining how this went down. You weren't in the mood for an exam at that moment and it wasn't an emergency, and her response was to push you by your shoulders onto your back and grab your ankles and try to pull them apart for twenty minutes? It sounds like a disgraceful fracas. Was this in the UK? Hope you complained to the hospital. And, did you kick her? Am dearly hoping you did. If someone fought me for twenty minutes like that, I'd have screamed blue murder - and kicked her, too!

There was an increased risk factor (meconium) hence the monitoring but no emergency.
I was in transition and lying on my side. They wanted me in lithotomy because it would be easier to keep the monitors in place and I guess because they thought that was the best way for me to give birth. I was okay with the monitoring and tbh I wouldn't have objected to an exam either, but i absolutely did not want to be flat on my back with my legs immobilised.
It was pretty bad. I really wish I had kept resisting. I held my knees together for a while until I could get the words out to tell them verbally to stop - it was just really hard to get any words out while I was using all my strength to stop them forcing my legs open. They paused, so I know they heard me, then they went back to it. After that I just gave up and didn't try to stop them from doing anything else. Obviously they didn't bother to ask my permission for any of the rest.
I don't think you realise until something like this happens how much you just freeze and obey. I wish I had kicked. I wish i had stood up and gotten off the bed. I wish i had protected myself and my baby. Instead i just gave up.
Apparently they genuinely believed that that was consent.
I posted about this before on feminism: chat. The number of people defending the midwives and calling me a bad mother for not doing as I was told was unreal.
The comments that really stick with me are "helping the woman into the correct position is standard midwifery care, surely" and "i sometimes think [the midwives] can't do right for doing wrong". The first one was particularly scary because i think the person who said it may actually be a midwife.

So do I resent it. Women in labour should, of course, be listened to, but sometimes the matter is life and death and the woman labouring really cannot have the option to let her DC die because she doesn't want to do what is necessary to get him/her into the world alive. That's someone else's life being played with. Sorry, but I think this.

Meconium is an emergency.

Meconium is a well recognised sign of fetal distress and I don't think any midwives or doctors worth listening to would class it as merely "an increased risk factor".

Around one third of babies at 41 weeks have meconium. No one from the hospital has ever tried to say it was an emergency, and I've spoken to a lot of them. No emergency was documented at the time.

Do you really think that women just want to let their babies die? Do you really think that some random doctor or midwife, who won't remember me in a few days, cares more about my baby than I do?
Do you think that all of the stories on here happened in emergency situations?? Even the pre-labour membrane sweeps?
Disrespect and abuse do not make babies safer. Violating women's bodies does not make their babies safer.