scholarly journals Medical Violence, Obstetric Racism, and the Limits of Informed Consent for Black Women

2021 ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Colleen Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cesarean Sections ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
Early American ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Unnecessary Procedures ◽  
A Site ◽  
Biological Race

This Essay critically examines how medicine actively engages in the reproductive subordination of Black women. In obstetrics, particularly, Black women must contend with both gender and race subordination. Early American gynecology treated Black women as expendable clinical material for its institutional needs. This medical violence was animated by biological racism and the legal and economic exigencies of the antebellum era. Medical racism continues to animate Black women’s navigation of and their dehumanization within obstetrics. Today, the racial disparities in cesarean sections illustrate that Black women are simultaneously overmedicalized and medically neglected—an extension of historical medical practices rooted in the logic of biological race. Though the principle of informed consent traditionally protects the rights of autonomy, bodily integrity, and well-being, medicine nevertheless routinely subjects Black women to medically unnecessary procedures. This Essay adopts the framework of obstetric racism to analyze Black women’s overmedicalization as a site of reproductive subordination. It thus offers a critical interdisciplinary and intersectional lens to broader conversations on race in reproduction and maternal health.

“Pretty hurts”: Acceptance of hegemonic feminine beauty ideals and reduced sexual well-being among Black women

Body Image ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 181-190
Author(s):  
Lanice R. Avery ◽  
Alexis G. Stanton ◽  
L. Monique Ward ◽  
Elizabeth R. Cole ◽  
Sarah L. Trinh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Feminine Beauty ◽  
Beauty Ideals

scholarly journals Black women and COVID-19: The need for targeted mental health research and practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 247-255
Author(s):  
Quenette L Walton ◽  
Rosalyn Denise Campbell ◽  
Joan M Blakey
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Mental Health Research ◽  
Women’S Mental Health ◽  
Frontline Workers ◽  
Women's Mental Health ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Health And Well Being

COVID-19 has significantly impacted a substantial number of Black Americans. Black women, in particular, are facing challenges financially, physically, and mentally during this unprecedented time. Between serving as frontline workers, being concerned about contracting the virus, contributing to their families financially, and worrying about their loved ones’ health, Black women are experiencing great strain on their mental health and well-being. These stressors illustrate the need for social work researchers and practitioners to address Black women’s mental health. This paper presents our reflections, experiences, and response to COVID-19 as Black women and scholars. Guided by our reflections and personal experiences, we put forth suggestions and reflexive thoughts for social work researchers and practitioners to prioritize Black women’s mental health during and after these unprecedented times.

Moral navigation and child fostering in Chiawa, Zambia

Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-269
Author(s):  
Sarah C. White ◽  
Shreya Jha
Keyword(s):  
Economic Status ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
Geographical Proximity ◽  
Birth Parents ◽  
Social Navigation ◽  
Personal Benefit ◽  
Child Fostering ◽  
And Migration ◽  
A Site

AbstractThis article explores the movement of children between households in Zambia as a site of ‘moral navigation’. Moral navigation extends Henrik Vigh's concept of social navigation from contexts of conflict and migration to more socially stable contexts in which well-being depends critically on people's ability to manage relationships. The live, dynamic and mobile character of these relationships means that they require active, real-time cultivation and response. While having practical objectives, these negotiations are also moral, articulated with ideas of what ought to be, and seeking to fulfil sometimes competing ethical projects. Life history interviews present three main perspectives: recollections of times in childhood spent away from birth parents; birth parents’ reflections on having a child living with others; and adults’ accounts of taking in other people's children. Strong norms of kinship unity and solidarity notwithstanding, in practice terms of engagement are differentiated through gender, marital, social and economic status, plus relational and geographical proximity. The pursuit of personal benefit contains the seeds of both contradiction and convergence with the collective good, as a relational understanding of moral selves sees one's own gain as proper, rightful and virtuous when it is realized in and through providing for others.

scholarly journals Ebuhlanti Amandla ngawethu: Womanism and black theology of liberation, in memory of Vuyani Shadrack Vellem

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fundiswa A. Kobo
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Black Consciousness ◽  
The West ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
A Site ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

The liberation of black humanity has been an area of scholarly reflection by black theologians and the black consciousness communities. The constructs of oppression such as race, class and sexism amongst others have been critiqued in the quest for liberation of a fragmented black humanity. In this article, this quest for liberation happens within ubuhlanti [kraal], a site for which Vuyani Vellem is ‘like a hermeneutical circle, where the mediations of the bonds of spheres and the instantiation of their life take place’. By looking at a fragmented black humanity and black women’s experiences, we posit that no western framework could ever be representative of those bodies, ubuhlanti becomes our solution as a heuristic device and symbol of a communication of the efficacy of integrated life. From a womanist perspective, ubuhlanti decentres the West. Ebuhlanti Amandla ngawethu [power belongs to us], as black women and men dialogue issues that affect black humanity. The whole proposition of this dialogue ebuhlanti is animated by our lived experiences, which already offer alternatives for us to decentre.Contribution: Premised by the lived experiences of black humanity in their quest for liberation, this paper contributes in the dewesternising discourse by presenting alternative epistemologies and spiritualities. A womanist dialogue with black theology of liberation ebuhlanti, a decolonising and decentring praxis for the liberation of black humanity is our solution as blacks.

scholarly journals Cesarean Section Epidemic: Coping Strategies Adopted in Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Ferreira D’agostini Marin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Cesarean Section ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Cesarean Sections ◽  
Brazilian Society ◽  
Strategic Measures ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
And Child Health

In this article, we discuss the strategic measures adopted in Brazil to reduce the high rates of cesarean sections. We present specific programs for both public health and supplementary health and for improving maternal and child health. We hope that these governmental initiatives, coupled with a paradigm shift in the Brazilian society regarding childbirth and women's health, will reduce cesarean section rates in the short and medium run, leading to positive outcomes for maternal and children's health and well-being.

Fulfilling the Underlying Purpose of Informed Consent to Research

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica W. Berg ◽  
Paul S. Appelbaum ◽  
Charles W. Lidz ◽  
Lisa S. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Treatment Situation ◽  
Consent To Treatment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Participation In Research ◽  
Treatment Settings

To a great extent the underlying purposes of informed consent in research settings resemble those in the treatment situation. Informed consent promotes individuals’ autonomy by allowing subjects to make meaningful decisions about participation in research projects. Informed consent is also a means of reducing inequalities of knowledge and power in the researcher-subject relationship and thus increases the cooperation and compliance of subjects. Increased knowledge also enhances patients’ abilities to make decisions that will protect them from unwanted and undesirable intrusions on bodily integrity, perhaps of even greater importance here than in treatment settings, because of the sorry history of abuses inflicted on research subjects. As great as the similarities are between consent to treatment and consent to research, the differences are equally great. In treatment settings, as already noted, clinicians and patients are presumed to share the same goal: promoting patients’ health. They may disagree over the means, but a general coincidence of interests is ordinarily the rule. Charles Fried calls this confluence of interests the principle of personal care. “The traditional concept of the physician’s relation to his patient is one of unqualified fidelity to that patient’s health. He may certainly not do anything that would impair the patient’s health and he must do everything in his ability to further it”. The essence of this principle is that physicians will not allow any other considerations to impinge on their decisions as to what measures are in their patients’ best interests. Since the goal of scientific investigation is the production of generalizable knowledge, not primarily the promotion of individual health, the interests of subjects and researchers are not identical. Clinician-researchers who are providing treatment to subjects in their research studies may feel this clash of interests most acutely as steps taken to protect the generalizability of the data may conflict with the maximization of benefit to individual subjects (2). The need to take this conflict into account in the decisionmaking process is largely responsible for the differences between consent to research and consent to treatment.

The Concept and Ethical Justification of Informed Consent

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica W. Berg ◽  
Paul S. Appelbaum ◽  
Charles W. Lidz ◽  
Lisa S. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Ethical Justification ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
American Society

The values underlying informed consent—autonomy and concern for individual well-being—are deeply embedded in American culture, in our religious traditions, and in Western moral philosophy. It is not surprising that informed consent is a cornerstone doctrine of contemporary medical ethics and health law in the United States. There is widespread agreement about the importance of the concept, goals, and practice of informed consent. Even when there are differences of opinion about the best way to implement informed consent in clinical practice, or when there is debate about the core meaning of the concept, the attention paid to these controversies only reinforces recognition of the importance of informed consent in contemporary health care and medical research. The concept of informed consent has multiple meanings and draws its ethical justification from several sources. Some consider informed consent to be synonymous with the ideal of shared decision making between physician and patient, or at least to embody this ideal (1). Others emphasize that informed consent is a particular sort of decision made by a particular sort of decision maker (2). Still others focus on informed consent as a norm-governed social practice that is embedded in social institutions, specifically law and medicine. This chapter discusses these different but often overlapping conceptions of informed consent. From a patient’s perspective, informed consent appears to be a right, while from the physician’s viewpoint, it is a duty or obligation. In fact, informed consent imposes responsibilities on both patient and physician. The relationship between ethical rights and duties, as well as the possibility of conflict between them, form another topic of this chapter. In this chapter we also discuss the ethical values and goals that underlie informed consent. Informed consent is grounded in some of the ethical values most prized in American society and Western ethical thought, especially autonomy— auto from the Greek word for self, and nomos from the Greek for rule—literally “self-rule.” It is interesting to observe how the fundamental goals of informed consent usually coincide, but sometimes conflict, both in theory and as manifest in particular cases.

Asylum Seekers Struggle to Recover the Everyday: The Extended “Emergency Shelter” at Tempelhofer Feld as a Site of Continuous Crisis

Sociologus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fazila Bhimji
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Emergency Shelter ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
A Site

Abstract This study describes how the iconic hangars at Tempelhofer Feld, which are designed to accommodate asylum-seekers temporarily prior to relocating them to various other parts of Germany, have for some of them turned into a more permanent and more regimented site of accommodation in Berlin. The shelters have housed several hundred asylum-seekers for two and a half years, and in many respects they contradict the so-called Willkommenskultur (‘welcome culture’) on which Germany has prided itself. Drawing on Vigh’s (2008) notion of continuous crisis, this study argues that these asylum-seekers have found themselves residing in a state of perpetual regimentation, which they understand as detrimental to their well-being. It also shows that they have nevertheless sought to find well-being and to dignify their lives by striving to normalize this situation.

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