Topic: pregnancy

Birth rape. It’s the relatively new term used by some to describe awful labor and delivery care where a woman’s personal choices are disregarded. It often involves doctors or midwives shoving fingers or other medical instruments into a woman’s vagina during childbirth without any warning, and sometimes even continuing after the woman screams out in pain or loudly objects. The term has continued to morph and has lately been used to describe cases like Lisa Epsteen’s, whose doctor threatened to call the police and force her to have an emergency c-section because he was worried about the health of her child.  The problem is that this new bit of progressive vocabulary hurts both birthing rights activists and sexual assault survivors. More »