What Care for Birthing Mothers? The Relevance of UDHR Art. 25 in the Framework of Obstetric Violence in Italy and Portugal

Abstract

Obstetric violence (OV) was first defined in 2007 in Venezuelan law as gender-based violence (GBV), i.e., having structural roots rather than happening in contingent or subjective situations. In Venezuelan Law, OV is framed as breach of multiple human rights of women (e.g. right to life, right to be free from violence, and right to health): more recently, international human rights law has followed suit– recognizing that pregnancy and childbirth care must be provided according to the principles enshrined in article 25 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), the right to health. Its actual implementation, however, still shows a cleavage between standards and practice. This work seeks to examine the meanings of the term “care” in art. 25 UDHR in international, regional, and domestic legal documents and its actual articulation. Support to such critical analysis is provided by scientific literature, providing a review of the legal notion of OV and its prevalence in the context of analysis. This work focuses on Italy and Portugal - countries particularly relevant for the recent developments of the subject matter in Europe, also in light of the influence exercised by Latin American activism through Spanish activism. While the meaning “care” in the context of childbirth is quite deep and comprehensive in human rights standard-setting instruments, also highlighting how OV disrupts such care by jeopardizing the agency, dignity, health, and self-determination of the birthing person, such care is still not up to those standards – in jurisprudence as well as in in the daily reality of the analyzed countries.