Abstract
In Brazil, unlike other countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, pregnant women and women who have recently given birth were included in risk groups for the new disease. This fact had great impact into the Brazilian childbirth humanization movement. In this article, we examine the online debate among activists to understand the favorable arguments to this inclusion, as well as change proposals driven by notions of risk that this pandemic brings to the delivery scene. From an anthropological perspective on the risk construction in pregnancy and childbirth, three different meanings of risk were evoked: the vulnerability of the pregnant/postpartum bodies; the notion of contagion; and maternal mortality. We also seek to weave some reflections on the paradoxes and strains that the “risk group” labeling can represent for humanized healthcare and for the reproductive matters of Brazilian women.
Keywords:
risk; COVID-19; pregnancy; natural childbirth