Vulnerable and Empowered in Childbirth. Multidimensional Analysis of Vulnerability in Obstetric Care

OBJECTIVE. Taking into account the two classic senses of vulnerability in the social sciences—the anthropological and the social—the purpose of this article is to introduce the Butlerian conceptualization of vulnerability—understood as an act of power and resistance—as a key theoretical-methodological tool for understanding and analyzing women’s perinatal experiences. MATERIAL AND METHOD. The reference thesis analyzed various instances of medical care of the perinatal process in the city of La Plata, with complementary methodological techniques: observations with different degrees of participation in prepartum courses and waiting rooms; in-depth interviews with women-mothers, men-fathers, and health professionals; and an extensive corpus of informal talks and presences in the field, between 2013 and 2019. RESULTS. In the reinterpretation of the data corpus, three main senses were noted in which the vulnerability of women associated with obstetric care of their reproductive processes emerged: a) Vulnerability to medical decision (loss of autonomy); b) Vulnerability enhanced by other associated vulnerabilities; c) Vulnerability and resistance, empowerment. CONCLUSIONS. Starting from the cross between a new conceptual lens to understand vulnerability, I analyzed birth experiences of women from La Plata. I warned that in these experiences and taking into account their own evaluations of care in different areas -public, private or home- it is possible to trace three types of vulnerability: a) to the medical decision—loss of autonomy—; b) powered by other vulnerabilities; and, c) as a catalyst for empowerment.