Jurisprudential Overview of Obstetric Violence and Discursive Analysis of the Court Decisions in Southern Brazil

Abstract

Obstetric violence is the appropriation of women’s bodies and reproductive processes by health professionals. It is expressed in dehumanized treatment, abuse of medicalization, and pathologization of natural birth events. The objective of this research is to map the national jurisprudence on obstetric violence in order to analyze in depth the judicial decisions of southern Brazil, in order to identify how “persuasive definitions” and “normative stereotypes” are mobilized in the discourses used to support the sentences. It is qualitative, exploratory, inductive research, using the documentary technique. The study analyzed 12 judgments in their entirety. As main results, normative stereotypes referring to four axes were identified in the speeches: “specialized literature”, “expert evidence”, “obligation of means” and “expertise, medical records and witnesses” and persuasive definitions related to two axes: “medicine” and “Pregnant”. In addition, silences have been identified about bioethical principles and fundamental rights, which are little explored in the judgments. From the results, the research infers that the rationality and legal argumentation of the decisions involving violence against the pregnant women analyzed here has a lack of specificity, meta foundation, and sin by not allowing control over the decision-making provisions, making it difficult to contrast them, finally, the dialogical characteristic of the right and the guarantee of the health law.