Obstetrics in a Time of Violence: Mexican Midwives Critique Routine Hospital Practices

Mexican midwives have long taken part in a broader Latin American trend to promote “humanized birth” as an alternative to medicalized interventions in hospital obstetrics. As midwives begin to regain authority in reproductive health and work within hospital units, they come to see the issue not as one of mere medicalization but of violence and violation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with midwives from across Mexico during a time of widespread social violence, my research examines an emergent critique of hospital birth as a site of what is being called violencia obstétrica (obstetric violence). In this critique, women are discussed as victims of explicit abuse by hospital staff and by the broader health care infrastructures. By reframing obstetric practices as violent—as opposed to medicalized—these midwives seek to situate their concerns about women's health care in Mexico within broader regional discussions about violence, gender, and inequality.