BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2024 Dec 20;24(1):832. doi: 10.1186/s12884-024-07036-3.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: People with disabilities experience perinatal health disparities. This qualitative study examines disabled people’s experiences of labour and delivery care from a disability justice lens.
METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted between July 2019 and February 2020 with 31 women and transgender people aged 18-45 years with physical, sensory, and/or intellectual/developmental disabilities, who were living in in Ontario, Canada and had given birth in the previous five years.
RESULTS: People with disabilities described negative experiences of provider-driven, disrespectful, and discriminatory labour and delivery care that can be interpreted as examples of disability injustice and obstetric ableism. People with disabilities also described positive experiences of collaborative, respectful, and disability-affirming labour and delivery care that can be interpreted as examples of disability justice, facilitated by what feminist disability justice scholars and activists call collective access.
CONCLUSIONS: Collective access to labour and delivery care can improve perinatal health care for people with disabilities and promote disability justice. Reimagining care-related decision-making as an interdependent, collaborative, respectful, and disability-affirming process shared between patients and providers can help to facilitate collective access to labour and delivery care.
PMID:39707204 | DOI:10.1186/s12884-024-07036-3
