Obstetric Violence

Mistreatment of a woman by healthcare personnel during pregnancy, childbirth or the postpartum period, encompassing documented conduct such as performing a medically unnecessary procedure, including a cesarean section, without the woman's informed consent, using dehumanizing or verbally abusive language toward a patient in labor, or denying pain relief or timely emergency obstetric care, framed in the legislation that first defined it as the appropriation of a woman's body and reproductive processes by healthcare providers. Venezuela became the first country to define obstetric violence as a distinct legal category, in its 2007 Organic Law on Women's Right to a Violence-Free Life, and Argentina adopted a comparable definition in its 2009 Comprehensive Protection of Women law, with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights subsequently holding that states must regulate and supervise healthcare providers to prevent, investigate and remedy such conduct.