Women's Studies 2244 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Health Canada, Medicalization, Home Birth

• School: Western University
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: Women's Studies 2244
• Professor: Jessica Polzer

Document Summary

Typically limited to: overly simplistic discussions about choice and decision-making, issues such as abortion and contraceptive use. Broader contexts that shape and constrain choices and decision-making often overlooked. Multiple contexts and discourses that influence reproductive choice : Policy > access to health care (e. g. , abortion, pre/postnatal care, midwifery). Legal > permissible actions, restrictions on access. Medical > medical discourse frames pregnancy as time of high-risk. Media > what examples do we see of uneventful birth. Cultural > cultural differences in access and birthing practices. Hospitals have become normal places for birth in contemporary western societies; dominant ideology that hospital is best and safest place for babies to be born . Definition of all childbirth as risky legitimizes invasive and technological management. Increasing technologization and medicalization of childbirth usurps power/control from women. Although there are a few first nations communities in canada that have re- established community birthing and aboriginal midwifery is growing, most first.