Re-centering Relationships: Obstetric Violence, Health Care Rationalities, and Pandemic Childbirth in Canada

Emerging evidence suggests that the COVD-19 pandemic is eroding childbirth rights. Drawing on narratives of women who gave birth in Canada during the pandemic, this article exposes a paradox in that policies aimed at limiting interpersonal contact implicitly acknowledge the connection between health, well-being, and the social context of people's lives, yet they frame this relationality as a liability to be eliminated. They do this despite the many benefits that social support is known to confer for pregnancy and childbirth. I suggest that obstetric violence theory could be expanded to include the perinatal health care system's failure to consider the well-being of pregnant and birthing persons as necessarily interdependent with that of close others. Conscientiously and routinely making the safeguarding of these relationships a priority in perinatal health care planning may strengthen existing health care systems against certain forms of obstetric violence. [childbirth, COVID-19, obstetric violence, relational personhood, Canada].