Do You Know Your Hospital Labor and Delivery Rights

Join Indra Lusero (Staff Attorney) and Kendall Bentsen (Organizer) from Pregnancy Justice, as they discuss the civil and human rights you have in the hospital during childbirth as well as the limitations of those rights in practice. This webinar includes an extensive Q&A session as well as an interactive quiz that will take you through the twists and turns of a birth experience in a hospital and test if you know your own birth rights.

There is no point in pregnancy when people lose their civil and human rights, yet people often experience mistreatment and right violations during labor and delivery. A 2019 study stated that one in six women “reported experiencing one or more types of mistreatment”; and that reported rates of mistreatment during childbirth were “consistently higher” for women of color (bit.ly/3ebURiY). Furthermore, in a 2018 survey, 65% of doulas and nurses indicated that they had witnessed providers “occasionally” or “often” engage in procedures explicitly against their patients’ wishes (bit.ly/3bTxmtl).

Mistreatment during childbirth can take place during health care through neglect, coercion, verbal abuse, forced interventions or surgeries; when health care providers unlawfully disclose confidential health information to law enforcement or to State agencies that coordinate with law enforcement; and during incarceration. And this all happens in the context of a U.S. health care system where extreme disparities persist for Indigenous and Black women in particular, where maternal mortality is rising, where some interventions are overused while other effective options are underused.

Interested in learning more?

Read this article: bit.ly/2ZfP6fZ

Sign our petition demanding doctors respect the rights of pregnant people: bit.ly/Pregnancy JusticeDRAY

Download Pregnancy Justice and BRBA’s free guide: Birth Rights (bit.ly/BirthRightsGuide) A resource for everyday people to defend human rights during labor and birth