R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Every Mother Counts Staff, July 16, 2013
Most
of us spend very little time partially naked at the mercy of strangers, but
when we do, we want to be treated with respect and our dignity protected.
For mothers all over the world, respect and dignity are never more important
than during childbirth, one of the most challenging, painful and potentially
frightening times in their lives. For too many women however, that’s not
part of the care package when they deliver in hospitals and birth centers.
What
exactly does disrespect look like? The White Ribbon
Alliance,
a global network of maternal health advocates describes it like this: Too
often, pregnant women seeking maternity care receive ill treatment that ranges
from relatively subtle disrespect of their autonomy and dignity to outright
abuse: physical assault, verbal insults, discrimination, abandonment, or
detention in facilities for failure to pay. Disrespect and abuse of women
during maternity care is a problem that has been obscured by a "veil of
silence" and can significantly impact women’s willingness to seek out
life-saving maternity care in facilities
Here’s
what disrespect looks like in real life:
Headlines
in the Washington Post and the Independent spell out an atrocity that’s played out in one form or
another all over the world. A hospital in Zimbabwe charges women $5 every
time they scream during labor. If they don’t pay, they’re held captive in
the hospital until someone covers their bill. In a country where most
people earn less than $150 per year, delivering in a hospital is a financial
burden that costs upwards of $50. When you add additional charges like screaming
fees the price becomes a human rights violation. In
Peru women resisted delivering in birth centers or hospitals, even ones that
were upgraded and well staffed. That’s because when they got there no one
spoke to them in their own language or called them by name. Nurses and
doctors ridiculed them for wanting to practice their own cultural birth
preferences. Doctors sometimes performed sterilizations during c-sections
without their patients’ knowledge or consent, deciding for themselves that when
women have enough children. In
the United States, disrespect can be more insidious. It’s the treatment a
woman might experience if she’s transferred to a hospital after an attempted
home birth when nurses and doctors scold her for wanting to deliver at home and
putting her child in danger. It’s the nurse who rolls her eyes at an “all
natural” patient who doesn’t want an epidural or the patient who is chided for
questioning her doctor’s advice. It might come from the office worker who
shuffles women seeking medical insurance from one line to another or the doctor
who keeps his patients waiting for long periods of time. It might also be
the c-section called because a doctor is tired of waiting for labor to
progress.
With
as many cultural differences dictating what respectful maternity care is, can
we even define it? Debra
Pascali-Bonaro, Chairperson of the The
International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative thinks we can. Working with input
from dozens of international organizations and a hundred individual maternal
health experts IMBCI created an initiative that works for every country, every
culture and every mother. Check out their link for more info!
