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Baby peeks out
at birth arrangement
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What about baby's point-of-view?
(campillo, Pixabay)


Baby peeks out at birth arrangementViolence & Birth


Here are some links between birth and violence:-
  • Frédérick Leboyer's book Birth without Violence revolutionised the way we perceive the process of birth, urging us to consider birth from the infant's point of view. Why must a child emerge from the quiet darkness of the womb into a blaze of blinding light and loud voices? Why must an infant take its first breath in terror, hanging upside down as its vulnerable spine is jerked straight? Why must the infant be separated from its mother after spending nine months inside her nourishing body? 
  • When Project World Peace premiered the documentary film Freedom for Birth, one woman that attended talked of her experience of birth, and that of her sister in eastern Europe. The large male doctor on both occasions extremely forcefully hit the woman's bump to force the baby out. We need to demedicalise birth. It must be removed from the control of medicine and men and returned to women and midwifery
What about baby's point-of-view?

What about baby's point-of-view?


  • The female body is well designed for birth. Women do not trust their bodies, lacking is the sisterhood of midwifery free from medical control, men don't want pussies slackened, and so on. So, there is a pandemic of cesarean birth: up to 70% in some hospitals. I've read that only perhaps 1% of births are emergencies, and that is in a society already bereft of trust in the female body and where women are bullied by patriarchy. What fraction of a percentage would that drop to in a society where women are empowered in, valued and celebrated for, their amazing lifegiving bodies and ability to birth? The scalpel is a knife, a symbol of violence, and knives really have no place in birth. 
  • Research shows a definite link between difficult births and serious criminals (e.g. herehere). Society needs to demedicalise birth and give it back to women. So they can birth naturally, organically, peacefully, without violent interventions.
  • [Birth as Rape:] As a young midwife, I became increasingly aware of the “walking wounded” women who had suffered in childbirth with their stories untold. As I came across them by chance in the laundromat or in the supermarket line, I realized that a huge segment of society was hurting and unhealed, silenced and invalidated. Sharing the details of their births, they became very emotional and sometimes deeply agitated and upset. But it wasn’t until fairly recently, in the last decade or so, that I was able to label this behavior as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the same syndrome that soldiers suffer when they return from war and find no one who will listen or can understand what they have been through. I remember a meeting some years ago with Sheila Kitzinger during which we discussed women who had had unhappy birthing experiences and yet, because the baby was fine, felt they had no right to complain. I told Sheila there was a book in this, but I was not going to write it. She went on to do research on the topic and soon began a series of workshops titled, “Birth as Rape.” She found that women who had suffered trauma while birthing exhibited the same behaviors as women who had suffered violent sex crimes: loss of voice; loss of boundaries; loss of trust in primary relationships; unexpected and inappropriate outbursts; misplaced anger; chronic health problems; etc. (Elizabeth Davis, Midwifery Today, published 2010, accessed online 21 November 2018)
"Peace on Earth begins with birth."

(Jeannine Parvati Baker)


Also see:-

Violence articles

Natural Birth

Birth Obstacles

Birth Obstacles - Sexual Abuse



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Page last updated: 16 May 2022.