Article ID: CBB443998318

‘Put Right Under’: Obstetric Violence in Post-war Canada (2018)

unapi

This paper takes the personal narratives of Canadian mothers and fathers as a starting point to examine the broader state of obstetrics in post-war Canada. As natural childbirth ideologies attracted growing North American attention from the mid-1940s onwards, an increasing number of Canadians sought less-medicalised births. Despite these desires, anaesthetisation—often without consent and contrary to the expressed wishes of the labouring woman—remained a mainstay of obstetric practice, and was used to prevent ‘untimely’ deliveries beyond a physician’s control. A growing group of Canadians spoke out against the ongoing use of this strategy, and, in voicing their support for natural childbirth, drew attention to the various types of abuse and mistreatment (both physical and psychological) that expectant mothers received at the hands of medical professionals. Professional tensions sustained a particular culture of harm in Canadian obstetric practice throughout the post-war period.

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Article Louise Hide; Joanna Bourke (2018) Cultures of Harm in Institutions of Care: Introduction. Social History of Medicine (pp. 679-687). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB443998318/

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Authors & Contributors
Wolf, Jacqueline H.
Evans, Jennifer
Robinson, Katie
Dunne, Bríd
Meehan, Ciara
Shalvey, Aisling
Concepts
Childbirth
Obstetrics and pregnancy
Medicine
Physicians; doctors
Medicine and ethics
Doctor-patient relationships
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
17th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Scotland
Canada
Glasgow (Scotland)
Bahia (Brazil)
England
Puerto Rico
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