Feminist ethic of childbirth with potential for activism
http://www.gwu.edu/~medusa/childbirth.html
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A primary goal of a feminist ethic of childbirth would be dismantling pathological constructions of pregnancy and labor, thus lessening the need for the disciplining medical gaze and automatic intervention. Young emphasizes the need to shift from a ideology of curing a woman in labor to one of caring for a woman in labor. She argues that a delivering woman's physical body is not diseased, but simply in an altered physical condition that requires help in her own actions. Focusing on the caring role of the medical provider, rather than curing, shifts the medical gaze and repositions the provider to a level of greater equality with the woman in labor, as they now must be attuned to her specific needs and desires. Simultaneously, a feminist ethic of childbirth would also divorce birth from definitions of natural and equations with motherhood, eliminating the essentialist and limiting traps of this rhetoric. It would instead focus on locating connections between power and knowledge and how they operate.
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