This is the first book to unpack the legal and ethical issues surrounding unauthorised intimate examinations during labour. The book uses feminist, socio-legal and philosophical tools to explore the issues of power, vulnerability and autonomy. The collection challenges the perception that the law adequately addresses different manifestations of unauthorised medical touch through the lens of women’s experiences of unauthorised vaginal examinations during labour. The book unearths several broader themes that are of huge significance to lawyers and healthcare professionals such as the legal status of women and their bodies.
The book raises questions about women’s experiences during childbirth in hospital settings. It explores the status of women’s bodies during labour and childbirth where too easily they become objectified, and it raises important issues around consent. The book highlights links to the law on sexual offences and women’s loss of power under the medical gaze.
Women's Birthing Bodies and the Law includes contributions from leading feminist philosophers, healthcare professionals, and academics in healthcare and law, and offers pioneering analysis relevant to lawyers and healthcare professionals with an interest in medical law and ethics; feminist theory; criminal law; tort law; and human rights law.
1. Introduction Camilla Pickles and Jonathan Herring 2. Non-Consented Vaginal Examinations: The Birthrights and AIMS Perspective Rebecca Brione 3. Silence, Acquiescence or Consent: Interpreting Women’s Responses to Intimate Examinations Elsa Montgomery 4. Female Genital Examination and Autonomy in Medicine Neda Taghinejadi and Brenda Kelly 5. When a Uterus Enters the Room, Reason Goes out the Window Stella Villarmea 6. Human Rights and Gender Stereotypes in Childbirth Christina Zampas 7. How Should the Performance of Periparturient Vaginal Examinations be Regulated Charles Foster 8. Including the Victim’s Perspective: Can Vaginal Examinations Ever be Sexual Assaults? Catarina Sjölin 9. When ‘Battery’ is not Enough: Exposing the Gaps in Unauthorised Vaginal Examinations During Labour as a Crime of Battery Camilla Pickles 10. Implied Consent and Vaginal Examination in Pregnancy Jonathan Herring 11. Troubling Consent: Pain and Pressure in Labour and Childbirth Claire Murray 12. Redressing Unauthorised Vaginal Examinations through Litigation Andrea Mulligan Afterword: Unauthorised Intimate Examinations as/and Sexual Violence: Some Epistemic and Phenomenological Considerations Sara Cohen Shabot
Camilla Pickles is Assistant Professor at Durham Law School, Durham University. Jonathan Herring is Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.
Reviews for Women’s Birthing Bodies and the Law: Unauthorised Intimate Examinations, Power and Vulnerability
Pickles and Herring's collection offers a pioneering and rich contribution on unauthorised vaginal examinations during labour ... But beyond the strict focus on this topic, it offers new insights to raise, yet again, some of those uncomfortable and theoretical questions that have been keeping alive the fire of feminist debate in academia and activism. -- Elena Caruso * Feminist Legal Studies *
