Recently, I wrote on this site about Caesarean section, trying to nail down my thoughts and my questions around C-section, especially the ways that it seems statistically over-prevalent in the United States. I am trying to wrap my brain, too, around questions of consent — what does it mean to consent to C-section in a context where a doctor recommends it.

The question of consent among birthing people is important to me as part of a larger project. I’m working with a group of colleagues on three collections of essays, research, art and poetry this fall — one on reproductive justice, one on perinatal loss, and one on birth trauma. The question of consent connects most closely to the third topic, birth trauma. Birth trauma connects to my earlier reflections, because C-section is often considered a traumatic experience in birth.

But C-section is not the only way that birth can be traumatic. Birth advocacy organization Birth Monopoly (2024) connects the experience of birth trauma to the practice of what it refers to as “obstetric violence”:

Obstetric violence is an attempt to control the birthing person’s body and decisions, violating their autonomy and dignity. This mistreatment of women and birthing people in the childbirth setting is often delivered verbally and normalized as routine care. Obstetric violence has also been termed “disrespect & abuse” in birth settings by the World Health Organization (2014). (para. 1)

Birth Monopoly is articulating more experiences of trauma beyond C-section with this definition, but in a way they exist on a continuum. (You can find more examples later in this post, below.)

I’m posting here the call for poems, essays, art and research on that continuum of birth trauma. If you would like to contribute your own work to this discussion, we would welcome it. You can reach out to me and to my colleagues in the emails listed below.

Illuminating the Experience of Birth Trauma
Call for Research, Art, and Story

According to the late birth advocate and doula Penny Simkin (2022), “Between 25 and 34% of women report that their children’s births were traumatic, even though the staff and their support team may not perceive it that way.” This special issue of Survive and Thrive seeks research and scholarship, stories and art around the experience of birth trauma.

Defining Birth Trauma

Penny Simkin (2022) gives us a starting place, a broad umbrella, to define birth trauma:

Birth trauma includes physical injury, danger, or death to mother or baby, or the perception thereof by the mother or partner. It also includes feelings of extreme fear, aloneness, disrespect, lack of control or helplessness. (para. 1)

Some forms of birth trauma are unavoidable parts of the birthing experience.; however, some are not. Some forms of birth trauma are created by systemic policies and inertia. Other forms are created by individual medical decisions that bring harm to the birthing person, baby, and family, and can include what is often termed “obstetric violence.”

Some forms of obstetric violence derive from medical procedures enacted without consent. According to the Birth Trauma Association (2024), “two in five women giving birth have had procedures performed on them without their consent” (para. 1). These include: vaginal examination (17.9%), episiotomy (16.6%), cervical sweep (12.5%), and rupture of the membranes (9.8%) (paras. 1-2). Birth trauma could involve unexpected harmful circumstances, assault, or lack of choice and coercion.

Without sharing their stories, birthing persons suffer in silence, sometimes not even realizing their experience causes ripples of harm through the rest of their lives. To that end, we initiate this special issue to call particular attention to the experience of birth trauma.

A Call for Research, Art, and Story

We are seeking submissions in the form of research articles, essays, narratives, art, creative nonfiction, poetry, stories, and other art forms that answer the questions:

• What is birth trauma?
• What events, actions, and systems contribute to birth trauma?
• What is the impact of birth trauma on birthing persons, birth partners, babies, families, and birthworkers, and their communities?
• What are the consequences of sharing birth trauma experiences for birthing persons, birth partners, and birthworkers?
• How do birthing persons, families, and others move forward after experiencing birth trauma?
• Why do so many birthing persons experience birth trauma?
• How can we listen for and understand instances of birth trauma in its earliest awakenings?
• How can we detect, prevent, and treat birth trauma?
• How can we facilitate better birth experiences?
• What constitutes a better birth experience?

Topics discussed may include instances of disrespectful practices, obstetrical violence, and more. Works may engage intersections between birth trauma and gender and racial violence. They may focus on the consequences following a traumatic birth, including pregnancy and infant loss, postpartum depression or perinatal mood disorders, fear of and anxiety around future births, sexual and other health dysfunction, damage to infant-parent relationship, negative impact on relationship with birth partner, trauma transmitted in the family system, lack of trust in the healthcare system, and economic burden placed on birthing person and family.

We welcome contributions from women and other birthing people; birthworkers and health practitioners (doulas, midwives, nurses, physicians, and other naturopathic and health care providers); advocates and caregivers; parents, partners and families; and finally scholars and researchers (in public health, health communication, gender and sexuality studies, nursing, medicine, psychology, social work/sociology, and other fields).

We seek a diversity of voices: low, medium, and high-income settings; various education backgrounds, credentials, training, and areas of expertise; urban, suburban, and rural; liberal and conservative; cis-gender, trans-gender, gender-queer, and non-conforming; straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, and more; all races and ethnic heritages; and any ideological background, religious and spiritual perspectives.

We accept writing in all genres (from poem to essay to scholarly treatise to video, as well as visual arts).

Submission Deadlines

February 1, 2025: Deadline for Abstracts. Authors who submit abstracts will receive early feedback and encouragement, if their work fits the call.

Submit to editors Zomi Bloom (zomibloompoetry @ gmail.com) and Kelsea Schoenbauer (kelsea @ d.umn.edu) and managing editor David Beard (dbeard @ d.umn.edu) simultaneously. (Please note that I added spaces before and after the “@” to these email addresses to prevent them from being “scraped” by bots on the internet.)

May 1, 2025: Deadline for Completed Work. You do not need to have submitted an abstract to submit a full paper. Submit to: stcloudstate.edu.

Fall 2025: Projected Publication.

References and Suggested Readings

Birth Monopoly. (2024). What is obstetric violence?

Birth Trauma Association. (2024, July 15). Two in five women in labour have procedures performed without their consent, survey finds.

Elmir, R., & Schmied, V. (2022). A qualitative study of the impact of adverse birth experiences on fathers. Women and Birth, 35, e41-e48.

Horesh, D., Garthus-Niegel, S., & Horsch, A. (2021). Childbirth-related PTSD: Is it a unique post-traumatic disorder? Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 39(3), 221-224.

Irth. (2024). Birth but we drop the b for bias.

Reed, R., Sharman, R., & Inglis, C. (2017). Women’s descriptions of childbirth trauma relating to care provider actions and interactions. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17(21).

Rice, H., & Warland, J. (2013). Bearing witness: Midwives experiences of witnessing traumatic birth. Midwifery, 29(9), 1056-1063.

Shorey, S., & Wong, P. Z. E. (2022). Traumatic childbirth experiences of new parents: A meta-synthesis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 23(3), 748-763.

Simkin, P. (2022).What to do during a traumatic labor and birth to reduce the likelihood of later post-traumatic stress disorder. Prevention & Treatment of Traumatic Childbirth.

World Health Organization (2015). The prevention and elimination of disrespect and abuse during facility-based childbirth.