Birth as a frontier:

obstetric violence, neonatal experience, and the silences of the system

Birth as a shared experience

Birth is a deeply human event that, far from being a merely biological act, constitutes a scene in which neurophysiological, emotional and symbolic marks are inscribed, accompanying the mother-baby dyad throughout life.

However, obstetric violence, recognised as a form of gender-based violence, is often analysed through theoretical frameworks that, by focusing on the woman as the sole protagonist of childbirth, reproduce an adult-centred perspective that excludes the newborn as a subject of rights and as a recipient of potentially violent practices.

This article seeks to problematise the invisibilisation of the newborn within the paradigm of respectful childbirth, showing how normalised practices configure a form of violence that lacks recognition within the Argentine legal framework and remains absent from most international legislation and guidelines on respectful childbirth.

Central thesis

Through an ethical, healthcare and neurobiological perspective, this article argues that birth is a shared event: when one body within the dyad is violated, the other is violated as well.

Naming this violence is the first step towards transforming it and building births that care for and dignify both.

The voice of the newborn

“I cannot speak, but I already know what fear is.
I have no words, but my body screams.
I do not understand the world, but I recognise hostility.
White light. Cold hands. Noise.
I am far from her. And I do not understand why.
Was I not supposed to be held when I was born?
Was life not meant to begin on her chest?
They cut me. They weigh me. They expose me. They silence me.
Someone measures me. Someone laughs. Someone rushes.
Nobody asks my permission.
Nobody explains anything to me.
And then I understand something I do not understand:
that this world is not mine.
That I was born on foreign soil.
And that I will have to learn to defend myself from the very beginning.”

Obstetric violence: beyond individual acts

Obstetric violence has been defined as a specific form of institutional violence exercised against pregnant women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. It is not merely a matter of individual acts, but of systematised practices perpetuated in the name of medical care.

Yet there is something more subtle, and at the same time deeper, that does not always fit within legal definitions: the configuration of the childbirth/birth scene as a device of power.

The childbirth scene as a device of power

A scene in which:

• technical knowledge displaces lived experience;
• control is valued more than care;
• institutional time is imposed over the body’s own time.

And within that device, there is a presence that is almost always omitted: the newborn.

The newborn as an invisibilised subject

The newborn has historically been invisibilised as a subject. The newborn is not recognised as someone who perceives, registers and remembers, especially through the body.

Their crying is labelled a “reflex”, their movement “involuntary”, their need for contact “a detail” that can wait.

There is something brutally evident that is nevertheless systematically denied: violence, obstetric or otherwise, affects the woman and also reaches the newborn.

The one who is born is also there

And yes, it seems absurd to have to say it: the one who is born is also there.

That is precisely why we need to shake off indifference and expose the absurdity of what has been naturalised.

The newborn’s body feels. It perceives light, cold, touch, voices and absence. It registers without language.

But because the newborn does not speak, we deny it.
Because the newborn does not complain, we silence it.
Because we believe the newborn does not remember, we repeat it.

But the body does remember

The historical denial of neonatal pain

Until not so long ago, babies were operated on without anaesthesia. Not because it did not hurt, but because it was assumed that they could not feel. That their nervous system was immature. And yet, they moved violently. They cried. Their vital signs became overwhelmed.

The body responded. The body knew.

And that denial of neonatal suffering was more than a medical error: it was an epistemological decision. A way of defining which lives deserve care and which bodies can be intervened upon without asking. A form of violence endorsed by scientific silence.

Although this practice has now been corrected, the bias persists. The newborn is still often treated as a body to be controlled rather than a person to be cared for.

Efficiency as justification

The newborn is measured, cleaned, moved, separated, handled. All in the name of a supposed “efficiency” that rarely takes their sensitivity into account.

But the body inscribes. It does not need words to build memory.

Neurobiological evidence: sensitivity from birth

Evidence from perinatal neurobiology has shown that newborns are highly sensitive to sensory stimuli from birth. They are able to discriminate voices, register familiar smells and respond differently to physical contact or to its absence.

Abrupt separation, sustained exposure to artificial stimuli, instrumental touch or the absence of the maternal body are not physiologically neutral: they generate traces that the nervous system registers and preserves.

A neurophysiological memory, without narrative

This is a neurophysiological memory:

• of elevated cortisol;
• of respiratory patterns;
• of muscle tone;
• of the vagal system.

This trace is not archived in words, but it shapes bonds, responses and ways of being in the world.

And when an obstetric scene is organised without care, what is inscribed is not birth, but bewilderment.

Not welcome, but threat.

The obstetric scene as an architecture of power

When violence disguises itself as protocol

Obstetric violence almost never shouts; rather, it disguises itself as protocol.

It is exercised in the name of order, efficiency, routine and, also, fear of tragedy.

But its effects are profound, even when they leave no visible marks.

The birth scene is shaped by multiple institutional decisions that rarely consider the baby as a subject.

What is prioritised in the institutional scene

What is prioritised is:

• doing over being present;
• procedure over bonding;
• asepsis over attachment.

These practices are not exceptions: they are the norm.

And it is precisely this normalisation that makes them more difficult to question.

Normalised practices that must be reviewed

Separating without need.
Cleaning with force.
Weighing before holding.
Lighting without protection.
Aspirating without need.
Rushing because there is more to do.

These things are done without stopping, without asking, without recognising that on the other side there is a body that feels.

Because they have always been done.

Because the system fears delay more than it fears harm.

The intervention that is not named as intervention

The newborn is exposed to a scene of systematic intervention at the most vulnerable moment of their existence.

And what is most disturbing is that this scene is often not even thought of as intervention.

It is called “welcome to the world”.

But the world offered to the newborn is cold, lonely and medicalised.

Reviewing the model that sustains these practices

Healthcare around birth has historically been shaped by a pathologising view. For this reason, the urgent task is not to deny this, but to critically review the model that sustains it:

Necessary questions

Which practices do we protect out of habit?
Whom do we listen to when deciding how birth should happen?
Which bodies remain outside real care?

Because every institutional gesture communicates something. And when it does not communicate care, it communicates power. And when that power is imposed on bodies that cannot defend themselves, that too is violence.

Naming the unnamed: the violence that still has no name

The limits of a strict legal definition

To say that the newborn cannot be a recipient of obstetric violence because it is not gender-based violence is, on the one hand, true if analysed from a strict legal definition. But it is insufficient if we are speaking from an ethical, healthcare and perinatal perspective.

Let us take this step by step.

Obstetric violence is a relational phenomenon

Obstetric violence is a relational phenomenon, not a one-directional one. Reducing it exclusively to gender-based violence against women invisibilises the dyad.

In a birth involving interventions without consent, with routine invasive or traumatic practices, it is impossible to think that only one party is being violated. If the mother is violated, the newborn is violated as well: by extension, by simultaneity, by resonance.

Two bodies under the same logics of control

There are two bodies involved in the same act, within the same system, under the same logics of control.

The newborn is not an appendix.

Treating the newborn as a “collateral effect” of childbirth is, precisely, one of the most sophisticated forms of perinatal violence. And what is most serious is that it does not even have a name in normative frameworks: that is why naming it is political.

Newborn rights and systematic practices

There are systematic practices that violate the rights of the newborn.

This is not a separate problem or a matter exclusive to neonatology. It is a constitutive part of how we give birth and are born within a biomedical system that decides, by default, over the bodies least able to express themselves.

The law does not exhaust reality

Legislation does not exhaust what critical thought can and must problematise.

The fact that something is not in the law does not mean it does not exist. The newborn lives, feels and is a subject of rights. The fact that the newborn has no legal category as a victim of obstetric violence says more about the void in our normative framework than about their real lived experience.

So, what follows?

Distinguishing without invisibilising

We can, and must, distinguish between obstetric violence as gender-based violence, which is indeed a recognised legal category, and perinatal violence as a broader phenomenon, which includes pregnant women and newborns.

The absence of a legal framework should not immobilise us. On the contrary, it invites us to dispute meaning and push the boundaries of what can be said and defended.

One scene, two affected bodies

When a woman is subjected to violent practices during childbirth and, simultaneously, her newborn is exposed to unnecessary interventions, we are not facing two independent situations: these are intertwined expressions of the same system of power, which crosses and conditions both bodies inseparably.

Naming the violence experienced by newborns does not erase obstetric violence: it expands it. It makes its complexity visible.

Not competing between oppressions, but showing the magnitude of the problem

And this violence — the one that does not fit within the legal framework, the one that is not reported because it is not even registered as such — must also be spoken.

Not to create competition between forms of oppression, but to show the magnitude of the problem.

Conclusion: what still has no name

Naming as a political, human and justice-based act

Naming the violence that crosses the mother-baby dyad is not a rhetorical gesture: it is a political, human and justice-based act.

Final questions

Can a woman be respected if her baby is not?
What if what we call routine is nothing more than systematic violence?
Can there be real care when care begins from distrust of physiology?
What does it say about a system when it protects protocols more than the bodies that are born and give birth?

Birth as a shared psychoneuroendocrine event

Because, psychoneuroendocrinologically, birth is a shared event: it is not possible to violate one body without leaving a mark on the other.

Dissociating the impact is impossible; thinking that only one body suffers means ignoring that being born and giving birth are intertwined processes.

A violence that continues to operate because it is not named

But this shared violence still has no name.

It does not appear in protocols.
It does not appear in laws.
It is not reported.

And precisely for that reason, it continues to operate.

Naming it is not a merely symbolic gesture.

Because only by making visible what remains unnamed is it possible to transform practices and guarantee scenarios that dignify both bodies: the one who gives birth and the one who is born.