Breaking the Frame: Obstetric violence and epistemic rupture

The concept of ‘obstetric violence’ has emerged as an important legal and activist tool in the global quest for humane, equitable, and respectful maternal and intrapartum care. Over the last decade or so, the term has been elaborated as a legal concept in several countries of the Global South and has travelled across transnational boundaries, with scholars from diverse regions adopting the framework. In this paper, I argue that the term obstetric violence is not just a mode of description or a legal concept, but that it constitutes an epistemic intervention. By naming normalised modes of harm and violation as violence, this conceptual vocabulary challenges normative conceptions of pregnancy and birth. By rejecting the normalisation of reproductive oppression, the language of obstetric violence also constitutes a refusal of epistemic frames that silence, diminish, erase, and devalue alternative and embodied forms of reproductive knowledge and agency. I also argue that we need to consider and conceptualise obstetric violence not just as gender violence but as a specific form of violence against reproductive subjects. This means grappling with what makes this form of violence distinctive. It also means considering a broader entanglement of forces that work to coerce/constrain reproductive subjects beyond the scope of gender or the boundaries of ‘women’. Finally, I explore how Afro-feminist, decolonial, and queer challenges advance the focus on obstetric violence as violence against reproductive subjects, offering new directions that reiterate the epistemic rupturing potential of this conceptual apparatus.