Abstract
In 2018, a significant movement of public denunciation of gynaecological and obstetrical violence has emerged. Behind the words “gynaecological and obstetrical violence”, a great variety of acts and attitudes toward women are criticised, ranging from inappropriate speeches to physical assault. This research offers a legal study of the law likely to be mobilized in this field. It makes it possible to identify and categorize situations denounced as “gynecological and obstetrical violence” and to qualify them legally to help to secure patients’ rights as well as good professional practices. The research highlights a cross-analysis of the different branches of law applicable in this field and in particular civil law, administrative law, criminal law and disciplinary law. The research also integrates case law – through the study of courts’ decisions and disciplinary sanctions – which specifies the conditions for the application of various sanctions for “gynecological and obstetrical violence” by law. In addition, the research decided to involve all actors concerned. Patients’ voices were taken into account by integrating testimonies collected in the context of interviews, or from victim support associations, but also by listing complaints made in letters sent to several legal departments in maternities. The points of view of doctors and midwives concerned were taken into account at each stage of this research construction, by the use of their testimonies in the videos of the « key witnesses », by individual interviews but also and above all by the participation of representatives of the professions concerned in every work meeting. Thus, this research offers a rigorous legal framework, nourished by the reality of concrete conditions of medical care. About our results, this legal analysis reveals two distinct dimensions of the links that unite law and “gynecological and obstetrical violence”. The law first appeared as a preventive tool which, unfortunately, is still often unknown or misunderstood. To the law seen as a tool of prevention, corresponds, almost in mirror form, to the law as an instrument of sanction, from which limits were observed in the research. This inventory of the law applicable to « gynecological and obstetrical violence » opens up prospects both in terms of strengthening the autonomy of patients and the free choice of the practitioner, for better prevention of reported situations of violence but also in terms of renewing sanctions. Indeed, if legal mechanisms exist to apprehend and sanction certain faults of health professionals, they are often unknown and procedural obstacles are likely to limit their application.