Respectful maternity care is a human right; every woman and her baby must be treated with care, respect, and dignity, to be safe, and to have complete freedom and autonomy. The notion of “safe motherhood” is usually limited to physical safety, but childbearing is also a significant time of transition for a woman and her family, with deep individual and cultural implications. Because motherhood is unique to women, challenges of gender equity and violence against women are integral to maternity care. As a result, the concept of safe motherhood must be stretched beyond the prevention of morbidity or mortality to include respect for women's basic human rights, such as autonomy, dignity, feelings, choices, and preferences, as well as emotional support during pregnancy and birth. This maternity care shall be received in all available health care institutions in the world.
During pregnancy and childbirth, a woman’s relationship with maternity care practitioners and the maternity care system is critical. Not only are these encounters a means for necessary and inherently lifesaving health services, but women's experiences with caregivers at this time have the opportunity either to empower and comfort or to inflict long-term harm and emotional trauma, adding to or disengaging women’s confidence and self-esteem. In any case, women’s memories of their childbearing experiences last a lifetime and are frequently discussed with other women, leading to an event of confidence or fear around pregnancy and childbirth. Generally, as childbearing and delivery experiences stay with women throughout their lifetimes for they are momentous events and are times of intense vulnerability, we must make sure that they would have pleasant and empowering experiences. Furthermore, any disrespectful maternity care is a violation of women’s basic human rights. Bowser and Kathleen Hill published their findings about the prevalence of poor maternal care in institutions for childbirth. The review found evidence of disrespect and abuse, ranging from subtle disrespect to overt violence, as well as mothering women’s fear of physical and emotional trauma at the hands of maternal care practitioners. Bowser and Hill discovered that the dread of receiving abuse discourages women from seeking proper maternal care. This is now a growing concern affecting the domains of healthcare research, education, human rights, and civil rights advocacy.
Currently, there is an assertion of the universal rights of childbearing women, addressing the issue of disrespect and abuse among women seeking maternal care. This increased awareness of childbearing women’s inclusion in human rights safeguards, highlighted the link between human rights and various program concerns related to maternity care, enhanced the power of maternal health advocates to partake in human rights processes, affiliated childbearing women’s sense of entitlement to high-quality maternity care with international human rights standards, and provided a foundation for holding the maternal care system and communities accountable to these rights. Moreover, it emphasized the seven rights of childbearing women which are: (1) freedom from harm and ill treatment, (2) right to information, informed consent and refusal, and respect for choices and preferences, including companionship during maternity care, (3) confidentiality and privacy, (4) dignity and respect, (5) equality, freedom from discrimination, and equitable care, (6) right to timely healthcare and to the highest attainable level of health, and (7) liberty, autonomy, self‐determination, and freedom from coercion.
References
Bowser, D. & Hill, K. (2010, September 20). Exploring Evidence for Disrespect and Abuse in Facility-Based Childbirth. Retrieved from USAID-TRAction Project, Harvard School of Public Health, University of Research Co., LLC: https://cdn2.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2014/05/Exploring-Evidence-RMC_Bowser_rep_2010.pdf.
Respectful Maternity Care Is Not An Option. It Is A Right. (n.d.). Retrieved from Maternity Today: https://maternitytoday.org/respectful-maternity-care/.
World Health Organization. (n.d.). Respectful Maternity Care: The Universal Rights of Childbearing Women. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/woman_child_accountability/ierg/reports/2012_01S_Respectful_Maternity_Care_Charter_The_Universal_Rights_of_Childbearing_Women.pdf.