Obstetric violence, birth trauma, agency, and care in Ami McKay’s The Birth House

Abstract

Ami McKay’s The Birth House aptly captures how with the advent of obstetric technologies, medical interventions escalated the proportion of women who encounter obstetric violence as part of normal procedures resulting invariably in birth trauma. The novel portrays the dehumanizing experiences of birthing women under the care of a physician who represents the single-sighted perspective of obstetric care, undermining the uniqueness of each delivery experience. The paper analyzes how this narrative captures the phenomenology of obstetric violence during the early twentieth century. The paper aims to study how the novel analyzes the issues such as lack of agency, privacy, and dehumanization experienced by birth mothers in the maternity ward. This paper also aims to discover how the novel advocates for a positive birth experience emphasizing the uniqueness of each birth mother’s experiences. By employing the concepts of obstetric violence, birth trauma, agency, pain, privacy, medical colonization, and positive birth experience, this paper explores the epistemological friction in the notion of maternal care between the indigenous midwives and the traditional Western medical discourse to showcase the relationships among maternal care, obstetric violence, birth trauma, and positive birth experiences. The paper also critiques the novel for its uncritical polarized portrayal of treatments offered by the midwives and physicians.