Body Broken in Half: tackling an Afro-Brazilian migrant’s experience of obstetric violence and racism in Portugal through art making

Abstract

In this article, I address the issue of obstetric violence and racism by analysing the perception and depiction of the birth experience of an Afro-Brazilian migrant in Portugal, materialised in an artwork that is part of the Gallery of Obstetric Experiences (Galeria das Experiências Obstétricas). In Corpo Partido ao Meio (“Body Broken in Half”), Maíra expresses her experience of disrespectful care, invasive unconsented interventions and racism. The main focus of her artwork is the relationship between herself as a labouring woman and multiple health professionals who assisted her, organised around two main points: the interaction with a midwife who proffered racist tropes in a gentle way and the interaction with a physician who rudely performed unconsented interventions, while accompanied by medical students. Without disregarding other forms of obstetric violence that Maíra experienced, in this paper I focus on a particular form of manifestation of obstetric racism enunciated by a midwife. According to her, Brazilian women’s bodies are unsuitable for birth due to miscegenation. I question the reification of the caesarean section as an obvious consequential way to address that supposed incapacity, as put forward by the midwife. While Maíra’s experience is, in general, consonant with a wider setting of obstetric care where mistreatment of the pregnant woman is the norm, it echoes in particular an ingrained idea about race purity that is pervasive in a society in denial with its own colonial past and that translates in more or less covert forms of racism in obstetric care as well as in other realms of life.