Invisible Birth Rape

The Obstetric Hegelian Dialectic

Most obstetricians, midwives, and nurses, have no idea what obstetric violence looks like, because they learned in school, they practice it every day, and they call it “empowered birth.”

It still shocks me—and I imagine it always will—to witness time and time again how accustomed we are to the suffering and outright torture of mothers and babies in birth—how comfortable we are to see women’s vaginas reamed and violated by a doctor or midwife’s gloved hand.

It has become a cultural expectation—an absolute average—to see mothers brutalized in birth.

It is such a standard, that the horror of it, the perversity of it is unrecognizable to most people —masked entirely by its commonality.

Women themselves participate in inflicting these abuses on other women as doulas and midwives and doctors, and the society collusion is so complete that to suggest that this might not be necessary, or that it might not be acceptable, or that it even might be wrong, is to essentially commit an act of heresy.

I was recently tagged in an absolutely horrific birth video, depicting what should be known as exceptional violence, but which was, in comparison to the what occurs regularly on the spectrum of obstetric “care”,  just an everyday institutional birth.

This was a midwife-attended birth, and the video showed the midwife hauling on the baby’s head with her gloved hands, ordering the mother to push HARD HARD HARD HARD HARD, and then, not even ordering her to change position, but stating coldly I’m going to roll you on your back, then pulling on her baby some more, wrenching on her baby, then again, authoritatively alerting the mother that you’re going to feel my hand [in your vagina], (this is what passes for acquiring “consent”), and then proceeding to pull the baby out violently, while the mother cried in pain.

Like most examples of birth within the system, the parallel here to what is done to women in pornography is undeniable.

The video was shared by a prominent birth page, and in the description that accompanied the video constitutes the same rationalizations we’re all so familiar with. It’s the Obstetric Hegelian Dialectic:

First, a problem is manufactured—often on this context, real problems do ensue as a result of mistreatment, which then become real issues, but what also occurs frequently is that birth professionals themselves are so unfamiliar with how birth works, that they actually have no tolerance for the discomfort they experience when there is nothing for them to *do*, and so they have to make up the fantasy of a problem, or at least an urgency, so they can *do their jobs*, which is to respond to catastrophization.

The latter is done so easily, especially when all the actors are true believers. When the midwife *really does think* that the baby must be “delivered” within a particular time-frame, and this made-up parameter is violated…well it has to then be shoulder dystocia. Given the fabricated conviction of shoulder dystocia, if she doesn’t rip the baby from the mother’s body within the next five seconds, everyone might die, etc.

The midwife’s actions are, therefore, in her own mind, totally valid, because she has validated them in her imagination…but they’re all constructed from the fantasy playbook of obstetrics, rooted in deep misunderstandings about how birth actually works.

But when the mother has invested all her trust (and her money) in her midwife, allowing herself to be groomed to believe that this women has learned all of the gentlest and most holistic childbirth approaches and methods, and that she would never ever do anything to harm the mother, or to over-medicalize her birth…except if it were *really* really necessary….then she’s going to acquiesce to, and even buy into the unnecessary treatment automatically.

Furthermore, being humiliated and molested while trying to give birth tends to be very stressful and disorienting, and it doesn’t put you in a very good position to be arguing with anyone about birth physiology.

There was no shoulder dystocia in the video.

There was no apparent problem at all with this birth at all, except for the pathologization of a totally normal situation, and the projected energy of fear, and the horrific treatment of a mother and the child.

This wasn’t even a case of “sticky shoulders” (whatever that really means—more nonsense), there wasn’t even any kind of undue time delay in the emergence of the baby that should have given *anyone* cause for concern. Unless of course, everyone involved had been brainwashed by an institution specifically designed to utterly sabotage birth, and to initiate all involved into a culture of trauma, and were therefore functioning within the cognitive frame of a collective delusion, each internally validating the other’s position.

The specific birth itself really doesn’t matter—this is a classic scenario.

That it is possible for anyone to witness a scene like the one that unfolded in the brief minutes of footage captured of this birth, and to not only find it acceptable…but to justify it, is surreal to me.

That it is possible for anyone to see a woman and her baby be treated that way, and not feel absolutely sickened, and horrified, and outraged for that mother and baby, is a testament to just how terribly traumatized most people are.

But it’s not only that this kind of treatment in birth is seen as unremarkable, or reasonable to most people. For so many, this birth constitutes a “natural birth”—a peaceful birth, even. A “powerful” birth. After all, it was attended by a certified midwife!

I don’t know anything about the mother or the baby or the midwife in the footage—the face of the birthing woman, her family members, and the midwife were obscured by the frame.

But I do know that this birth is actually *not* an especially violent one, compared to the other kinds of horror that routinely takes place in the hospital.

It’s probably the case that this mother may even have been very happy with her birth, and that’s none of my business.

We certainly all have a right to feel however we feel about our life experiences.

But when any media, footage, or material is freely shared in the public sphere, it becomes part of the wider conversation, and it is my business, to speak about obstetric violence in a way that might allow others to begin to shift their own cognitive framework, and to begin to displace what is, for most people, a very entrenched, yet distorted vortex of understanding —and to start to question why it is that we have come to believe that the kind of birth I just described is “normal.”

Why is it so “normal” that women emerge from the birth process with their bodies and minds ravaged; depressed, shellshocked, and in many cases, physically debilitated? Or in a state of total denial…

The effects of obstetric violence, and trauma—even the kinds that are seen as completely normal, and “empowering” in this culture—shape our individual experiences of life, and the entire culture.

What can birth be, instead? How was birth actually designed? And what does it look like to actually support a birthing woman with gentleness and compassion?

If you are one of the few—one of the women still among a minority—who is awake to this collective psychopathy, and who see this dynamic for what it is in the video footage of births that are constantly shared all over social media, you are not alone.

Know that birth does not have to be this way. Mothers do not have to experience this. Babies do not have to experience trauma and pain in order to be born. And midwives don’t have to sabotage birth.

If integral birth-work is your path, the Radical Birth Keeper School that my colleague Emilee Saldaya and I created is now open for enrollment — our next cohort begins February 2023,—receive $1,000 off your enrollment when you sign up in October. LEARN MORE HERE.

Not feeling called to birth-work, but wanting to delve in-depth into the art of (actual) holistic, spontaneous, physiological birth? Wanting to be a part of this major wave of revolution as we change the trajectory of what it means to be a woman, what it means to birth, and what it means to mother in today’s world?

Join me inside my private membership space for midwives, doulas, birthkeepers, and of course, mothers, who are interested in joining me for weekly integration calls, birth debriefs, case study discussions and group coaching, as we navigate issues of personal sovereignty, health freedom, and mothering amid the revolution.

We have monthly subscriptions available, but I’m also running a special of 25% yearly subscriptions through the month of October (and a lifetime membership option as well for a limited time). LEARN MORE HERE.