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Can respectful maternity care save and improve lives?
Author(s) -
Morton Christine H.,
Simkin Penny
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
birth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.233
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1523-536X
pISSN - 0730-7659
DOI - 10.1111/birt.12444
Subject(s) - dignity , childbirth , confidentiality , health care , maternity care , nursing , harm , human rights , medicine , public relations , psychology , political science , law , pregnancy , biology , genetics
Respectful maternity care is not a luxury, but a human right with the potential to improve maternal and infant outcomes in all countries. Interest in measuring and providing respectful maternity care has grown rapidly over the past three decades, and the effort to describe, define, enumerate, and implement the elements of respectful maternity care around the world has led to numerous publications and an impressive consensus of these elements.2-8 Work in this area reflects a growing recognition that quality maternity care requires more than increasing access to facility‐based care and skilled attendants and that highly medicalized and impersonal care is not just disrespectful, but increasingly unsafe for women and their infants. All efforts to improve childbirth have focused on eradicating disrespectful care, from the numerous shocking revelations in the 1950s United States about “Cruelty in Maternity Wards”9 to countries such as Venezuela and Argentina enacting laws in the 2000s for humanized birth, a concept that promotes the rights of every pregnant woman to evidence‐based information, as well as dignified, respectful, and high‐quality maternity care.10 In Brazil, social movements for change in childbirth began in the 1980s, initiated by feminist groups, alternative health practitioners, health reform activists, public health officials, and others. In 1993, these groups formed the Network for the Humanization of Childbirth (ReHuNa).11 With the advent of social media, respectful maternity care advocates are documenting women's stories, raising awareness about typical childbirth practices, and demanding changes in institutional practices that are demeaning to, and unhealthy for, birthing families.12 Numerous studies have since provided valuable insight about the pervasive growth of the problem and the variety of ways one may experience disrespectful care. The meaning of disrespectful maternity care has evolved and today generally refers to maternity care that includes any of the following13: