The Politics of Pregnancy

Socialism 2018

July 05, 2018

Healthcare of any sort in the US is plagued by the healthcare industry's drive to profit and the pressures of neoliberalism, and when sexism is added to the mix, you get prenatal and postpartum care end experiences that come far from meeting parents' and babies' needs. Pregnancy was once the domain of midwives who saw childbirth as a natural process, but today in the US almost 90% of deliveries are attended by obstetricians who are trained with a medical model of childbirth. Pregnant people are treated as patients, even when they're completely healthy, and on the flip side, sexism leads doctors and other healthcare providers to disregard women's experiences--worse even for Black expectant mothers who die in childbirth at three times the rate of white women. Reproductive justice often focuses on the right to become pregnant, avoid pregnancy, or to access abortion, but this talk will focus on the politics of wanted pregnancies and childbirth.

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