Percepción de la violencia obstetra ejercida por el sistema de salud mexicano: estudio de caso

Obstetric violence means extreme bodily control over a woman’s self-determination during childbirth. Medical practice establishes protocol guidelines to guarantee professional know-how through a mechanized intervention process, a rigid capacity for action, even a preference for professional judgment instead of the patient’s personal preferences. All these strategies are intended to ensure the well-being of the patient, but rejecting subjectivities or complex desires to be typified by the clinical approach instead of doing a humanized procedure that guarantees the active participation of the mother. In this case, our objective is to identify the main theoretical elements related to obstetric violence as the birth process, power dynamics and reproductive well-being, from the hermeneutical approach of a current real case. Narrative analysis reveals an unbalanced role play that generates an interpersonal relationship of power-submission that conditions the process of legitimation, decision-making and active participation of women, including their reproductive well-being as a human right.
La violencia obstétrica es una forma de control extremo del cuerpo y la autodeterminación de la mujer durante su trabajo de parto. La praxis médica utiliza protocolos establecidos para garantizar el saber hacer profesional mecanizando la intervención y toma de decisiones, e incluso aplicando criterios profesionales sobre preferencias personales para asegurar el bienestar clínico de la paciente, dejando al margen subjetividades complejas de tipificar desde el enfoque médico y que, sin embargo, darían lugar a un parto humanizado con trato digno y la participación activa de la madre. En este artículo, el objetivo es identificar los principales elementos teóricos sobre la violencia obstetra: proceso de parto, respeto, trato, poder y bienestar reproductivo, mediante el enfoque hermenéutico de un caso real actual.