Does "Birth Rape" exist?

Great Debates
21

Reminds me of when my wife was in the hospital for our second son. A guy I’ve never seen before walks into the room where my wife is laying and sticks his hand up her gown to have a feel, all without a word. My first instinct was to punch him out! Doctors could be more understanding in these cases, where this sort of contact is normal for them but unusual for us, but that is the job we are paying them for.

Almost any patient in any medical situation could experience this sort of thing. When I went in for a vasectomy I had a number of people touch and/or look at that area without asking my permission in each individual case - was I raped? What about when I was unconscious for a knee operation - My repressed memories are coming bac

22

FWIW, the first story in the OP’s link sounds like it was written from one very specific point of view, and is not exactly a good poster case for this… phenomenon?

23

You know, I think they just don’t have a better word. Assault just doesn’t have the same oomph, and doesn’t really encompass what they are talking about.

Certainly pregnancy and L&D are life changing experiences, and in the nature of such things some people are going to have a traumatic experience. I think it is safe to say that in no society are 100% of births trauma free – for mother or child. And indeed pretty often laboring mothers are only marginally compos mentis for some part of the experience and somebody has to take it out of their hands and make the call.

Still, my sister was delivered by c-section three weeks early and got to sit in an incubator because…ready? The doctor had a golf tournament at or aroudn the due date and didn’t want to have a problem. So he just scheduled her for a C section so the pediatrician could handle it from there. Seriously.

It is also fair to say that our society really does not do an especially good job of dealing with process in this case. I myself had many of the experiences described in the articles – episiotomy I didn’t want, baby who got stuck (really), blah, blah, ultimately an emergency C section with Thing 2. I was not traumatized in any long term way either time, but I had a terrific midwife, too, a midwife who took the time while I was pregnant to develop a relationship of trust with me, to set the boundaries in terms of who made what calls, and so on. After Thing 1 was born, she came to visit and told me why she had gone ahead and done the episiotomy – took the responsibility for her call and talked to me about it like a person. I still think she made the right call, nota bene. After all, I went back for Thing 2, with whom she had no chance to do anything as they were cutting before she got there.

But then, my husband wasn’t there either, he was parking the car having left a happily laboring wife in the delivery room. It is amazing how fast everything can go to shit. After Thing 2 she also came to see how I was processing the birth experience – and called me two weeks later just to be sure.

I do not think everyone has that kind of experience, the feeling that somebody gives a shit about them and how they are feeling. I think it is fair to say that most women do not. It is true that the objective of delivery is a healthy baby – but nevertheless, it is an experience the mother had also and certainly I think that, had I had the kind of handling some of my friends got, I might have developed PTSD too.

One of the things the delivery of my children taught me quite clearly is that sometimes nobody is in control and we are all just doing the best we can.

We do not deal well with death as a process either – though this is getting better – or with any number of other normal, natural processes which can be nevertheless painful. I don’t think calling it rape helps anything, but I think we lack a word to express the sense of violation these women feel – and sometimes rightfully so. They have been led to expect one thing and got something very, very different and this is what leads to trauma of this kind.

24

TRWTF is classifying a woman giving birth as a patient.

25

What else would you classify her as? She’s in a medical facility receiving medical care.

26

She’s in a hospital under a doctor’s care, with the potential for Very Bad Things to happen should there be a complication, so that’s a pretty accurate term from the physician’s perspective. :dubious:

27

All I can say, is if the answer to the OP’s question “does it exist” is “yes,” when rule 34 kicks in, there’s gonna be hell to pay.

28

What is TRWTF?

29

I’m gonna guess it’s “the real what the fuck”, but it would have been much more understandable if “the real” had been typed out. Which means that there are two WTFs in that post, one of which is “of course a woman giving birth in a hospital under a doctor’s care is a patient” and the second is “why the fuck does this person expect me to read his mind when he could just type out “the real””?

30

I think rape is the wrong word being used. Being mistreated and handled roughly is not the same as rape.

I had a traumatic birth experience almost five years ago and it still comes back and haunts me. I’ve developed a fear of getting pregnant because I never want to to through that hell again. My first daughter’s delivery sucked as much as a natural delivery could, but I wasn’t treated so abusively. I think it was* normal.* It was nothing like the second experience. I was held down, told to shut up, and the anesthesiologist never addressed me once, and told a nurse if I didn’t stop moving I could go without his help. That’s how he put it. I was in the middle of a contraction, trying to stay still while standing up. After four misfires a nurse wrapped her arms around me, holding me tight so I wouldn’t move. WTF? Why didn’t they do that in the first place when they saw I was already in distress? I’d been in hard labor for 19 hours. I didn’t have much control of my legs at that point and I know that must be at least fairly common. Why treat a woman like that when she’s already so delirious from pain and exhaustion?

But rape? No, I had no control, I was miserable, people were causing me needless pain…but it was not rape. It was just a complete lack of concern for my emotional well-being.

31

**1. TRWTF **
(Abbreviation) The Real WTF.

Billy: Look at this website! WTF is going on here?
Bob: Sure, that is an awful website, but TRWTF is you’re using IE 7!

Yes, from the perspective of a doctor, she is a patient. Many many women can and do choose to take a different role in their births.

32

Under US law, a medical procedure performed against the will of a competent patient is an assault. It would not matter that the medical condition involved mommy bits. To charge a medical professional with a crime, it would be an assault of some kind, although I can concede a sexual assault over simple. End of legal definition and discussion.

There’s a lot of gray area to the actual definition of ‘competent’, including head injuries, levels of consciousness, etc. I can do stuff to an unconscious patient under the doctrine of implied consent that I cannot do to someone alert and oriented without their express permission.

‘Birth rape’, IMAO is a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys, and is the same sort of semantic stunt as ascribing racism as a motive for any kind of political opposition.

Speaking as a working EMT. Your Mileage May Vary. Offer void where prohibited.

33

Against your will can also mean without informed consent, IMHO/IME.

None of those women sound particularly “under the influence” of hormones. In a case where sexual assault and the legal definition of rape occurs, the woman being “under the influence” of something by her hand or others does not diminish the act or the legal implications.
Assault to describe what is done (in this case I only highlighted membrane sweeping as a very overt exertion of “I know whats good for you better than you ever will” than the original link from the first post) may be closer legally, but rape may be closer emotionally, physically, spiritually.

And from elsewhere in the thread appendicitis != childbirth.

And yes, generally rape is tied to sexual acts, but it is a violation of the woman in and around the genitals. Just like one might argue that killing Matthew Shepard was “just a random torture and murder” rather than specifically a hate crime.

If there were precise words to categorize everything neatly enough to make everyone exactly comfortable, we wouldn’t need to have this discussion, I guess.

34

Unwanted medical treatment = unwanted medical treatment

Don’t forget the mouth! If your root canal goes a little more badly than you’d anticipated, did your dentist rape you? :rolleyes:

35

I think these women are doing themselves a disservice by calling it “rape”. It sounds like hyperbole, and it borders on disrespect to women who have been truly sexually assaulted by claiming their experience is the same.

A dentist once started working on a filling before the anasthetic set in. When I told him to stop, he grumbled about the fact that he was behind schedule and that I was probably imagining it because he’d waited plenty long for me to numb up (I wasn’t… for some odd reason, it takes me forever for local anasthetic to work on me). Should I accuse him of attempted dental rape?

The thing is, doctors and nurses and midwives are people too. Sometimes they get impatient, or tired, or frustrated, or overworked… and some of them have the bedside manner of a rabid buffalo, and would rather just do what they need to do without worrying about coaxing and coddling an uncooperative patient.

I seriously doubt that any of the medical professionals in the article set out to deliberately hurt or humiliate their patients, nor does it sound like any of them got any pleasure out of the experience. IMO, that makes them crappy doctors/nurses/midwives, not rapists.

LunarPlexus, what exactly should a woman giving birth in a hospital be called? If she chooses to give birth elsewhere (in the case of home birth or an alternative birthing facility), then she can call herself whatever the hell she wants… but if she goes to a hospital, she (and her baby) are patients.

36

You’re right. Just trying to spread an acronym I find useful to the Dope. Didn’t really mean to stir up the acronym acrimony. Anyway, you still would have had to read my mind to interpret “a woman giving birth” as “a woman giving birth not necessarily in a hospital with a doctor”.

So TRWTF is that, in the first post, brevity was employed where verbosity would have been better suited. And now the opposite is true, so on average, that’s two rational posts.

37

Sorry LunarPlexus, unnecessary acronyms make me irrationally cranky. I like words. I find typing words to be much less cumbersome than trying to decipher lengthy acronyms. :wink:

38

Does your browser not have the facility for right clicking on words to look them? That may be TRWTF.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that, at the time I started to post, roughly half the posters had used the word “patient” and I became impatient with that trend.

39

But why isn’t a woman giving birth under medical care a patient?

Anyway, it seems to be that calling it rape or not is semantics. The real problem is making sure that the needs of women giving birth are respected as much as they can be. To the extent that a woman can be involved in the birth process, she should be. Historically, women have definitely gotten the “Sit down, shut up, and let the expert do his thing” end of the stick. Obviously, the OB/GYN is the expert, but patients do need to be treated with as much respect as possible

40

But why is a woman giving birth under medical care? Birth isn’t an illness. Sometimes there are conditions that warrant medical oversight (either definition may be applicable), but all out of proportion to the numbers (in the US, at least). My point was to address the default assumption of roughly half the posters who preceded me that woman giving birth = patient.