Thematic Strands
Presenters examine perceptions and practices surrounding childbirth (from pregnancy to postpartum) across diverse social groups, cultural and historical contexts worldwide. This includes the role of biomedical and non-biomedical health practitioners (midwives,obstetricians, traditional birth attendants, doulas) and the acceptance or active desire for non-medicalized birth options (such as birth centers, home births, and unassisted births). This exploration will also create a space to delve into the beliefs and practices—spiritual, religious, familial, and cultural—that shape individuals' experiences and narratives of childbirth.
The aim is to document international and national policies, programs, and regulations in reproductive health, examining their translation and application in local care services, to inform our analysis and explore opportunities based on past and current public policies. This will also allow to foreground the voices of users—particularly marginalized cisgender women, in line with the research focus of the participants— of sexual and reproductive health services. Medical staff, incentivized to control fertility rates, have historically targeted specific populations—often marginalized by race, class, or other factors—for sterilization, turning reproductive choices into mechanisms of social control.
Reproductive justice provides a theoretical and analytical framework in response to the limitations of reproductive health and rights-based approaches (Bridges, 2011; Rapp, 2019; Daniel, 2021) who often reproduce systemic oppressions that shape the reproduction of “undesirable” populations according to a neo-Malthusian model of reproductive policies. Reproductive justice highlights medical racism and classism, drivers of health disparities and maternal mortality among racialized and low-income women, while it primarily affects cisgender women across our various fieldwork settings, LGBTQ+ individuals are also impacted. Giving birth is a central, but not the only event in people with a uterus’ sexual and reproductive lives where injustices are flagrant, this panel aims to discuss the multiple ways in which gender, race and class intersect in reproductive journeys from preconception to postpartum.
Investigate and historically analyze experiences of obstetric violence and a wider range of abuses related to reproductive and contraceptive care, in order to identify the factors that heighten women’s vulnerability during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care. This will involve further exploration of the concept of obstetric violence, fostering a collective reflection on the notion of 'care' and identifying 'non-violent' alternatives in pregnancy, labor, and postpartum practices. This will include contributions from healthcare professionals, caregivers, and careseekers, in contrast to the dominant hospital-based care model. This segment of the exchange will also provide space to discuss concepts like humanized birth, holistic approaches to childbirth, and the important roles played by midwives, doulas, and even family members in the reproductive process—an experience that extends far beyond the act of giving birth, foregrounding relational care and dynamics. Finally, it will provide ground for discussing how violent institutional practices extend beyond labor and childbirth, affecting different areas of reproductive care (i.e. abortion care).
While the actors mentioned above play a vital part in supporting women throughout their pregnancies, births, and postpartum care, these figures of care also play central functions in other important aspects of sexual and reproductive health. For example, they guide and assist women in making decisions about contraception, whether temporary or permanent, and in some cases, they are essential in providing or in refusing abortions, whether in legal or illegal contexts. This panel will explore the diverse narratives and positions, over time, that converge throughout this process, including autonomous women, their supporters, healthcare professionals, local midwives, activists, and others that provide care beyond reproductive times.
Research on reproduction often assumes a desire and active choice for childbearing and motherhood among people with a uterus (usually cis women in the regions studied by the invited scholars). However, not all pregnancies are wanted—some are endured due to limited access to contraception, partner’s and family’s impositions, or broader structural barriers. Others actively choose not to become mothers, challenging societal expectations of motherhood. Some decide to end their fertility or stop having children once they feel they have reached their desired family size, opting for sterilization as a contraceptive method. Yet, in certain contexts, this decision is not entirely personal but shaped by external pressures. Similarly, state policies can restrict access to fertility treatments for some individuals while facilitating cross-border reproductive care for others. This thematic axis will explore the complexities of not mothering, highlighting its significance alongside motherhood itself. It seeks to bring this issue to the forefront—one that has long been sidelined in both social sciences and global discussions on reproductive health and rights.
This strand explores the multifaceted and often intersecting dimensions of environmental injustices as they relate to reproductive experiences, bodies, and choices. Environmental injustice is inherently polysemic, encompassing both the tangible and symbolic impacts of ecological degradation on reproduction. It addresses the unequal impact of climate change and ecological degradation on reproductive bodies—especially among low-income communities in the Global South—where exposure to pollution and resource scarcity threatens maternal health and access to care. It also considers the rise of endocrine disruptors and other toxins that disproportionately affect the fertility of people with uteruses, highlighting the intersection of environmental and reproductive harm, as proposed by ecofeminism. Finally, it includes ethical and ecological concerns around childbearing, including the choice to forgo parenthood in response to environmental collapse and climate anxiety.
Through historical examinations of the role of midwives and their gradual relegation to the sidelines of reproductive care, a larger narrative emerges—one shaped by the medicalization and institutionalization of reproductive experiences within allopathic and biomedical frameworks. This shift has often ignored or excluded alternative ways of understanding reproduction and motherhood, both in non-Western societies and within Western medical traditions. Adopting a decolonial and anticolonial lens, this strand highlights how reproductive care has been influenced by colonial power structures, gendered hierarchies, and epistemic violence. It aims to bring forward the diversity of reproductive care practices and discourses on both global and local levels. |
