Abstract:

Obstetric and gynaecological violence is a social problem that affects and violates women’s right to freely decide on the sexual and reproductive function of their bodies, preventing their health from being fully guaranteed. The idea of reproductive justice articulates the right to health care that breaks down inequalities in women’s health based on their socio-economic status, ethnicity, educational level, or place of residence. Health care and the care of women’s bodies were (bio)medicalized in the last century in the West, establishing procedures that naturalized the disciplining of women so that, through the loss of control over these physiological events, they became clinical intervention practices typical of pathogenic care. The research approach combines a gender and human rights perspective, considering intersectionality. This multi-sited ethnography allows for the triangulation of data, while the narratives collected constitute didactic tools for the training of personnel in the prevention of gynaecological-obstetric violence, a Latin American category that denounces a global problem. Finally, this text is part of a line of research that aims to carry out a kind of verbal autopsy of gynaecological-obstetric violence in relation to the concept of reproductive justice in different places (Spain, Ecuador, Brazil), establishing a comparative analysis of the narratives of care in pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium, provided that they are low-risk cases.

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