Does "Birth Rape" exist?

Great Debates
81

Yes, Birth Rape does exist. Just because it is not sexual or sexual intercourse does not mean it does not exist. One of the definitions of rape is this: an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.

Doctors do abuse patients everyday. Many have god complexes and think themselves better or knowing better than their patients. While sometimes it may be for medical reasons that they do something, they are still not allowed to touch or otherwise act against a patients wishes. If they do so they are committing a crime and can be charged with assault in ALL states.

If the patient did not want to be touched at the time and he threw her legs open anyway, he is violating the law and can be charged with assault. Whether it was for medical reasons or not. As to the fetus being of primary importance at the time, I think that is one of the great debates. Back before the c-section became safe often it was the mother that was paramount. When a child wouldn’t fit through the pelvic cavity for whatever reason the barber (The term for Obstetrician in 1700s till the early 1900s) or midwife would have to crush the babies skull/body to remove it. Even the Catholic faith approved of this if it would save the mother.

More and more women are emerging feeling like their choices and feelings were not taken into account, even when there was no reason not too. I’m a Birth doula and have been researching and reading about the Childbearing field for five years now. The US is a shameful, shameful place for anyone to give birth in a hospital with an OB. We rank second to last in over 30 industrialized countries for infant mortality and morbidity. We rank third, could be fourth, to last among those same for maternal mortality.

Just by walking into a hospital you are usually at a 33% chance of having major abdominal surgery whether that is your plan or not. The WHO recommends that the C-section rate of any country only be 15%. Women in the US are not incapable of birthing, but our doctors and midwives who practice in hospitals ARE at danger of being sued if they haven’t appeared to done something.

Books for everyone in this debate to read that might really help:
Pushed by Jennifer Block and Birth: The Surprising History of How We are Born by Tina Cassidy.

Also PTSD is a real and common thing in pregnancy and childbirth. This site may help you understand it more. http://www.birthtraumaassociation.org.uk/what_is_trauma.htm

Here is an excerpt:
*Research into the area is limited and, to date, it has largely focused on the importance of the type of delivery. It is clear however, that there are risk factors for Post Natal PTSD which include a very complicated mix of objective (e.g. the type of delivery) and subjective (e.g. feelings of loss of control) factors. They include:

* Lengthy labour or short and very painful labour
* Induction
* Poor pain relief
* Feelings of loss of control
* High levels of medical intervention
* Traumatic or emergency deliveries, e.g. emergency caesarean section
* Impersonal treatment or problems with the staff attitudes
* Not being listened to
* Lack of information or explanation
* Lack of privacy and dignity
* Fear for baby's safety
* Baby’s stay in SCBU/NICU
* Poor postnatal care
* Previous trauma (for example, in childhood, with a previous birth or domestic violence)*

So in essence to the original question…
Yes, there IS such a thing as Birth Rape. If a doctor touches you or does something to you and you do not want to be touched or have something done then he has just committed a crime of abuse. Rape is a form of abuse. And because it involves our sexual organs, it can even more so be called Birth Rape.

82

All research these days states that an episiotomy does not prevent tears, but instead causes worse tears. ACOG has stated there is very rarely any reason to cut an episiotomy because of the risk of causing third and fourth degree tears. The only reason, is obstetric texts, these days to cut an episiotomy is for the use of foreceps or vacuum extraction.

Despite this doctors do still cut episiotomy’s and do still perform what is known as the husband stitch as a result. On a woman who has her perineum properly supported by the doctor and who is not being coached to push there is very little incidence of severe tearing. And lastly…by cutting an episiotomy you automatically have a 2nd degree tear where you might have had a 1st or none at all.

83

No, the situations that are being *called *Birth Rape exist. No one ever said they didn’t.

That is certainly true. But if I go to the police station and tell them to arrest someone because he raped me, I had better be talking about actual rape: penetration of my vagina (or anus, I suppose) against my will. If what I really mean is that he violently stole my purse, or punched me in the face, I can be charged with making a false allegation.

And if he did penetrate my vagina, but he’s a doctor and can prove he was doing it for a medical purpose, then his intent makes it not rape. Let’s say I have a prolapsed uterus, and I’m fine with it, but he decides to treat it without my consent. Is that assualt? Absolutely. Is it rape? Not on your life. Even though it involved my sexual organs? No way in hell.

Yes. Assault, not rape.

Right. Just as you say: assault, not rape.

While the second statement is true, it does not prove the first. No one is questioning whether this shit happens; they’re only objecting to calling it something it is not.

Rape is a form of abuse. But not all abuse is rape. Embezzlement is a form of theft. But not all theft is embezzlement. I can’t call every theft “embezzlement” just because it involved money rather than cars or electronics. If I’m kicked in the crotch, that’s a form of abuse that involves my sexual organs, but it’s not rape.

Believe me, I understand the desire to increase public awareness of mistreatment and abuse of mothers during labor. But I *strongly *feel that to call it “rape” severely undermines the credibility of the victims and ultimately hurts the cause far more than it helps.

84

Wait, “sexually violate” doesn’t mean “forced sexual acts?” What the fuck?
Someone help me out here.

85

This is completely stupid.

  1. Rape is forcible sexual ‘intrusion’. If someone holds a woman down and gropes her vaginal area in a sexual manner, it’s arguably rape. If someone drugs a woman for the sole intent of having non-consensual intercourse with her, it’s rape. If a doctor forcibly jams his hand up a woman’s vagina in a medical procedure, that’s not sexual. It’s not right and it is medical assault and battery, but it’s not sexual intrusion.

  2. With extremely rare exceptions for cases of psychosis and other psychiatric problems, no doctor should ever in any way treat any conscious patient without full informed consent. I don’t care what the situation is, but any doctor who does anything to a patient without informed consent should permanently lose their license. They should probably also be sued for some obscene amount of money.

  3. I agree that there is a tremendous problem - not just in obstetrics, but in medicine as a whole - which can best be summed up as ‘doctors (and nurses) are assholes’. Why? Because they are in a situation where they know everything and you know nothing, and you can’t get what you need - a prescription, a referral, whatever - without them. I don’t know what the solution to it is, but it’s a problem that needs to be acknowledged. Maybe if doctors got paid less the field wouldn’t attract such dicks.

  4. Doctors are necessary for birth. Yes, doing it on your own at home is ‘natural’. It was also, for most of human history, one of the greatest killers of women. People who think, “Oh, I’ll just shove this watermelon out of a hole the size of a cherry without any help or drugs or anything” are catastrophically stupid; unfortunately many of them still succeed in passing on their genes.

86

No such thing exists unless the doctor actually tried to sexually abuse the woman. Look, if you’re going to have a baby you need to agree to what the doctor says. This is just another excuse to sue doctors and get some few thousand dollars and which therefore drives up our health care costs. Also I cannot help but be reminded of that Family Guy episode where Peter sues his doctor because the doctor examined his anus for cancer.

87

Well, unless you’re talking about completely UNasissted births, most home births have trained midwives.

88

Except that, as far as the article linked in the OP goes, midwives are no better than the doctors or nurses when it comes to invading someone’s lady bits without permission or finesse. The only difference is that they’ll be doing so within the comfort of one’s own home.

/sarcasm

Informed consent is a one of the thorniest issues in the realm of bioethics. It’ll be a long time before the medical profession can learn to strike that perfect balance between obtaining the patient’s consent and just going ahead and doing what needs to be done when time is of the essence (which tends to be the case if there are complications during labour), if ever. Sometimes, as a patient, you have to trust that the people treating you have your best interests at heart, even if it doesn’t seem apparent at the time.

There’s a lot of progress to be made when it comes to childbirth… or rather, to patient care in general. Staff need to be taught how to communicate effectively and sympathetically, and they need to remember to ask for permission before treating a patient or even just touching them.

It’ll be pretty much impossible to get buy-in from the medical community by branding them as a bunch of rapists, though. That’s my biggest problem with this whole “Birth Rape” nonsense.

89

Actually, why do I think it would be taken a hell of a lot more seriously if a doctor took it into their head to forcibly palpate a man’s anus in violation of his expressed wishes?

90

It’s a doctor! Anyways a good doctor should ignore the pleas of a phobic patient to help treat him, to do so otherwise is violating the Hippocratic Oath.

91

Have to disagree with you here. Doctors are not necessary for birth and in fact have been the cause of a rise in infant and maternal mortality if you look at our past. When it was simply midwives attending women in the way past, yes there was death and much of it was not preventable. When barber physicians (the original name for OBs) started attending women regularly in the 1700s the rate of mortality skyrocketed. It was horrendous. Up until the early 1900s women were still giving birth at home with TRAINED midwives in attendance.

If you look at the numbers from then until now, there has been no change in maternal or infant mortality. We still rank as one of the last and have for the last 90 years since giving birth in a hospital, with doctors, became the common occurrence.

Let’s look at the Netherlands where there is something like a 30% homebirth rate, and all but high-risk women are attended by OBs. They have one of the LOWEST rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, as well as infant mortality and morbidity.

Giving birth at home is not stupid, or reckless, or dangerous if you have a trained professional. And pretty much anyone with the CPM title has more experience with normal birth than an OB who is trained as a SURGEON.

92

I don’t understand why they’re calling it rape instead of assault and battery, which is not only more accurate, but more likely to gain sympathy to the cause given no one would be outraged over grossly applying a label etc.

93

Is this a typo? Because only high risk women are attended by OBs here. Most women are attended by a nurse midwife and/or their family doctor on occasion. However, I think all the Dutch guys with an interest in the matter agree that the only way this is possible is to have a really very well organized system which is based upon the notion that delivery at home is the default setting and not the exception.

94

Everyone repeat after me: correlation DOES NOT imply causation.

95

My daughter was born at home. The midwife, and extremely smart and direct woman with no woo about her, was very clear that she did not accept patients whom she thought would not listen to her, particularly if they would give her trouble if she decided they needed to transport to a hospital. Most births do indeed go fine with minimal intervention, but it was clear to her that there were patients who always needed to have their way, and she wouldn’t accept the risk of patients like this. She weeded them out just like she did with multiples or breeches or cases of gestational diabetes. How many OB/GYNs or ER doc have turned such patients away, because they thought they wouldn’t follow medical advice?

I realize that a sizeable chunk of MDs have no personal skills at all (I’ve worked with enough), I feel a great deal of sympathy for them. They’re in a world where a certain percentage of the country think that vaccines are poison, medicines don’t work, and MDs don’t care about anything but money, and yet these people still come to them when they need help. I can understand their frustration at being told how to do their job. This doesn’t excuse assholish behavior, but a hospital is not a place to go to be treated in an understanding matter. If you don’t want to be treated like a patient and can’t accept the risks of a hospital birth, don’t go to an OB and give birth in a hospital. Give birth at home, or in a facility run by a CNM, and accept those risks.

I can’t help but think that somewhere out there, an EMT has been charged with rape for cutting off someone’s clothes after a car accident.

96

Most women would love to, but it’s very difficult to find a licensed birth center in the U.S. that your insurance will cover, for one. Most insurance won’t touch a homebirth at all, so apparently poor people “deserve” this treatment, because they have to use hospitals, right? Most states don’t license DEMs or CMs to do births, and midwives of that sort are “practicing medicine without a license”. CPMs are only licensed in about half the states, so that rules out a significant source of homebirth care for a lot of women. CNMs are few and far between, statistically, and often are not permitted to do homebirth due to malpractice insurance restrictions. Also, if you have a high-risk pregnancy, homebirth is irresponsible and birth center birth may be impractical. You really need the medical backup in that case. So you are saying that you have no bodily autonomy, and must submit to anything any random doctor, l&d nurse, or hospital midwife wants to do to you because you have a difficult pregnancy? Just because your deity or nature or whomever/whatever dictated that you have twins? Or because you had a mother with diabetes and contracted GDM? Really?

So if you go into the ER for abdominal pain, and the doctor ties you to the bed, sticks his/her fingers in your rear, performs an unsedated colonoscopy to look for the problem, palpates your genitals roughly, pushes on your belly and tells you to shut up when you ask him or her to stop, belittles you, slaps you when you complain of pain, decides that s/he must operate, gives you anesthetic that doesn’t work completely, and cuts you open while you still feel it, but safely extracts your diseased appendix, ALL WITHOUT OBTAINING YOUR PERMISSION, while you are screaming “NO!”, that’s fine, because if you can’t accept the risks, don’t go to an ER when you need care? You wouldn’t be upset at this? Wow, you’re a forgiving person. That is the kind of situation we’re talking about.

We’re talking about real assault, here. Quibbles about terms be d***ed, this is a serious issue, and not just in the OB side of medicine. We’re talking about abuse, plain and simple, and you’re advocating that we all be good little boys and girls, and do whatever the “nice” doctor tells us to do, even if it’s NOT the latest truths, even if it’s been proven to be outdated, even if it’s demeaning and harmful, because someone spent 8+ years at school. It’s a small problem, as far as I know, but it’s real and significant, especially with the attempted eradication of ethics departments in some medical schools.

If it was your child, would you feel that way? If some doctor did this to your little girl, cutting her genitals (episiotomy or female circumcision) while she screams without asking you or explaining first, and stitches her up without anesthetic, and expected you to hold her down for the procedures, for example, would you still say “well, s/he’s the doctor, I’m sure s/he knows best”?

  • I want to say that I know that MOST doctors and medical professionals are not like this, but I’ve seen enough stories now that it must be at least a few sickos or insensitives perpetrating this stuff across all the medical fields. Take a look at nursing home abuse, for instance.
97

Is it possible that shoving a speculum into someone without consent technically falls within rape laws in some jurisdictions? I could imagine how that might happen, depending on how the laws are worded.

98

Yes, actually. Utah has such a law. Utah Code 76-5-402.2 Object Rape I’m sure Utah is not the only state with Object Rape laws. All the person has to be doing is to put even a small bit of the object in there trying to cause pain or emotional suffering, according to Utah. “Punishing” a woman for being a homebirth transfer, etc., could easily fall under that category.

(IANAL, I just like Google)

99

It could be Asclepius himself and it would still be wrong of him to do anything to a patient without informed consent (assuming the patient can give informed consent).

100

Oh for god’s sake.

I’m a woman and a feminist, but this is so damn irritating. I’m sure some women don’t like the way they are treated and some are treated badly, but calling it some dumbass specialized version of rape cheapens true rape and actually undermines what you’re trying to do: get the medical profession to recognize their responsibilities in how they behave towards a woman who is giving birth.

keerist.