Profissões médicas e violência obstétrica: expertises, monópolios, autoridades e medicalização

Abstract

Obstetric violence is one of the most insidious forms of violence against women precisely because it violates their dignity when they are in the context of particular vulnerability, which is the period of gestation, antenatal, delivery and postpartum. Obstetric violence is directly related to the practice of the medical professions, whose professional field is marked by the pursuit of monopoly of expertise and the monopoly of health services, as well as the existence of a pedagogical action in medical schools marked by the incorporation of a professional habitus and symbolic violent patterns. Medical practice is also marked by cultural authority of doctors on patients and on other occupations in the health market, whose way of interpreting the service is done from the perspective of medicine. The consequence is the medicalization and a clinical, social and cultural iatrogenesis, which affects illness on individuals, as well as loss of autonomy on the environment and servility in relation to the medical treatment. This medicalization process also took place in Brazilian history. Medical professions have formed a monopolized market that is ruled by a specialized knowledge, but in practice dealt in exoteric terms. In obstetrics, the medical monopoly meant the exclusion of traditional birth attendants, midwives, as well as the removal of the woman's role in the context of their own parturition. This scenario has created scope for the establishment of various forms of the female body objectification and violence, which were then addressed by the movements for the humanization of childbirth and legislations such as the bill 7633 of 2014, which deals with obstetric violence. In the fieldwork done in the institution was sought to analyze the hypotheses of this research and confirm the way the doctors of the institution deal with issues such as the law of the escort, routine episiotomy, caesarean sections, reintegration the paramedical professions in care and other issues surrounding the problem of obstetric violence.