A person does not lose their fundamental human rights when they become pregnant. Every human being, regardless of their pregnancy status, has the following rights:
- Right to Informed Consent
- Right to Refuse Medical Treatment
- Right to Health
- Right to Equal Treatment
- Right to Privacy
- Right to Life
Every day HRiC receives violations reports from around the globe. We are compiling these stories to raise awareness of the routine violation against women in birth. Soon, you will be able to read full accounts, right here. If you have a personal story you’d like to share, please fill out this form. We hear some common stories from women who endured myriad wrongs during their pregnancies and births.
Violations take on many forms:
Physical abuse includes things like non-consented force, restraint, unnecessary procedures including episiotomy, and failure to provide pain relief.
Disrespect involves things like verbal abuse, bullying, blaming, humiliation, reprimands, and ‘shroud-waving.’
Non-confidential care holds little regard for unauthorized revelation of personal details, physical exposure, and lack of respect for religious or personal modesty.
Non-consented caremight mean that procedures were performed without adequate information or dialogue to enable autonomous decision-making, or that there was undue pressure to make specific clinical choices.
Misinformed care involves biased, non-transparent clinical information, disabling women from giving true informed consent.
Depersonalized care means there was an inflexible application of institutional policy, and / or failure to take into account women’s individual circumstances, including around companionship of choice.
Discriminatory care is unequal treatment based on personal attributes such as age, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and disability.
Abandonment of care: includes refusal to provide care due to inability to pay or birth choices outside of expected guidelines.
If you had your rights violated and would like to share your story, please fill out this form.