A Long History of Obstetrical Violence: When Can Historians Characterize Surgery as a Form of Cultural Warfare?

Public authorities, activists, and NGOs declare a crisis in maternal healthcare in Mexico. The nation’s own Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that 27% of indigenous women who were sterilized between 2006 and 2011 did not consent to the procedure. In a follow-up study, researchers discovered that 80% of indigenous women in the country are victims of obstetrical violence. Historians and activists have characterized forced sterilization as an act of genocide against marginalized groups. Using Mexico as a reference, my paper explores how historians can expand this methodological framework in order to expose politicized performances of reproductive surgery (including cesarean sections, abortions, and sterilizations) as an act of cultural warfare against individuals and communities. Whereas most histories of sterilization and violent surgeries focus on late nineteenth and twentieth century eugenics, my paper seeks to expand our understanding of the epistemological roots of contemporary obstetrical violence, and to suggest that Church and state groups have both advocated obstetrical operations as a violent means with which to colonize marginalized groups. I point to the actions of eighteenth century priests who performed cesarean sections (in order to evangelize the souls of unborn infants), and I explore the persistence of this “colonizing” approach to surgery over the course of two centuries. I seek to understand three intertwined threads: how contemporary activists characterize similar circumstances; how state institutions prevent grassroots movements from exposing surgical tactics as forms of cultural warfare; and how historians can confront and resist the dehumanizing and objectifying language in historical medical records.