Birth Rape: It's Criminal, But Is It Rape?

"Birth rape" is a viscerally shocking term that has made its debut online within the last few decades, and has been discussed by parenting bloggers and journalists in quite a lot of detail but remained controversial. If you have never heard the term before, it's probably not what you think it is. The term "birth rape" is, after all, not used to describe coerced sexual intercourse during labor.

What Is Birth Rape?

To understand what birth rape means, we'd first have to look at the meaning of the word "rape" without the modifier "birth". While rape most often refers to coerced sexual intercourse, rape is a crime that is usually motivated by the perpetrator's quest to have total control over the victim. It is more about power than about sex, and we'd generally agree that a crime can still be termed "rape" if the perpetrator used a bottle or some other instrument, rather than his penis, to violate the victim. 

As far as I can see, the term first appeared online in 2005. Since then, it has become a hot-button issue that has been discussed over and over again by journalists, bloggers including medical professionals, and women participating on online message boards where pregnant women and new mothers congregate. The experiences of those who apply the term to an event they personally underwent vary widely, but all were treated disrespectfully by a healthcare provider.

Women who feel the term "birth rape" applies to them may have had their membranes stripped, their water broken, their cervical dilation checked, an episiotomy (vaginal cut) carried out, or have had their placentae recovered from the uterus manually after giving birth, without their consent or despite their adament refusal and cries to make it stop. Sometimes, they are physically restrained while this happens and sometimes, they beg their healthcare provider to stop. Is it rape, though?

One Face Of Birth Rape

Dana is a highly educated professional who spent the last months of her pregnancy reading everything she could about birth. By the time she got to hospital, she knew she didn't want to have an episiotomy unless a very specific situation in which it would truly be warranted arose. She told her OBGYN she would prefer to tear naturally, and got a sneering reply — "And you're a doctor, are you?"

As her labor progressed, she started to do what most women in labor do: scream. That's when her nightmare really kicked off.

Read More: Sexual Assault and Rape Prevention Tips: What Can a Woman Do?

He kept his word. Dana required surgery to fix the scarring afterwards, but before that she went through a year of pain. She could not sit without pain, had no sexual intercourse because trying hurt too much, and suffered from urinary incontinence. Terrible, yes?

Dana happens to live in a developing country where patient rights are not a priority. The doctor still practices. You'll have to agree that what happened to her is a crime, but also that it has a sexual component and that the doctor wanted total control over her. The situation really isn't that different to rape, both in terms of how Dana felt, and in the fact that the doctor who did it violated her most intimate parts.