Women’s Birthing Bodies and the Law

Camilla Pickles is Assistant Professor at Durham Law School, Durham University.Jonathan Herring is Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.

• 1. IntroductionCamilla Pickles and Jonathan Herring2. Non-Consented Vaginal Examinations: The Birthrights and AIMS Perspective Rebecca Brione3. Silence, Acquiescence or Consent: Interpreting Women’s Responses to Intimate Examinations Elsa Montgomery4. Female Genital Examination and Autonomy in Medicine Neda Taghinejadi and Brenda Kelly5. When a Uterus Enters the Room, Reason Goes out the Window Stella Villarmea6. Human Rights and Gender Stereotypes in Childbirth Christina Zampas7. How Should the Performance of Periparturient Vaginal Examinations be RegulatedCharles Foster8. Including the Victim’s Perspective: Can Vaginal Examinations Ever be Sexual Assaults? Catarina Sjölin9. When ‘Battery’ is not Enough: Exposing the Gaps in Unauthorised Vaginal Examinations During Labour as a Crime of Battery Camilla Pickles10. Implied Consent and Vaginal Examination in Pregnancy Jonathan Herring11. Troubling Consent: Pain and Pressure in Labour and Childbirth Claire Murray12. Redressing Unauthorised Vaginal Examinations through Litigation Andrea MulliganAfterword: Unauthorised Intimate Examinations as/and Sexual Violence: Some Epistemic and Phenomenological Considerations Sara Cohen Shabot

Pickles and Herring's collection offers a pioneering and rich contribution on unauthorised vaginal examinations during labour … But beyond the strict focus on this topic, it offers new insights to raise, yet again, some of those uncomfortable and theoretical questions that have been keeping alive the fire of feminist debate in academia and activism.