The Risk of Giving Birth in Brazil: The Struggle for Obstetric and Post-Partum Care without Violence

In this paper, which is part of a broader study on the discursive representation of pregnancy care and childbirth assistance in Brazil, I present a critical discourse analysis of narratives - birth reports and letters to the obstetrician - related to the birth event in that country. The choice of this theme was motivated by the question of hospitalization of childbirth in Brazil, country where the index of caesarean surgeries registered in private hospitals is 82%, the highest in the world. Employing analytical categories of the critical discourse analysis approach (Jäger, 1996; Jäger, 2012; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999). I investigate the texts, considering the discursive construction of identity and processes of identification by women writing about the experience of giving birth, either hospital vaginal birth, home birth or cesarean section. Taking the documents as a record of a situation, I interpret the narratives and the evaluation they show as part of a wider criticism of the care model in Brazil, which embodies aspects of hegemonic struggle discursively performed.