Violência obstétrica: contradições do sistema de saúde nas políticas de humanização do parto

Abstract

We analyze how the organization of health care work, as from the capitalist productive restructuring, interferes in the care of women seeking public-hospital care to give birth, culminating - among other determinations – in the so-called obstetric violence. We investigate how the official guidelines and public policies that intend to promote 'the humanized birth' were opposed to the actual working conditions in the care of births. The determinants for the situation of violence against women in childbirth are: the division of centralized work at the hospital; the objectification of the female body as another 'commodity'; the despising of the activity of midwives; and, finally, the intensification of medical work, guided by the need to assist women in an industrialscale productivity. Thus, professionals make use of rationalization based on excessive use of technologies and interventions to make agile the outcome of their works (the birth itself).