Carme Isern-Mas: The Affective Injustice of Obstetric Violence

Tuesday December 15 2026 @11:30 (CET)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
In contexts of obstetric violence, women’s emotions tend to be mistreated in two paradigmatic ways: through emotional dismissal, as their experiences of pain, fear or grief tend to be dismissed; and through emotional imposition, as feelings of gratitude, joy or relief tend to be imposed upon them. In light of this, we argue that obstetric violence is frequently compounded by a kind of wrongs that has been overlooked: affective wrongs, which are wrongs done to women as affective beings, and which are not reducible to physical harm or autonomy violations. To that end, we apply the framework of affective injustice to emotional dismissal and emotional imposition. We argue that both deprive women of fundamental affective goods, and that this deprivation is wrong. We suggest that there are good reasons to think that this wrong may amount to a form of affective injustice, but stick to the more modest claim that obstetric violence is compounded by affective wrongs. We ground our analysis in women’s testimonies of obstetric care. 

Bio
I am an Associate Professor at the University of the Balearic Islands, specializing in moral psychology, and applied ethics. I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Evolution and Cognition from the same institution, where I was funded by an FPU pre-doctoral fellowship. Additionally, I earned an M.A. in Philosophy at Florida State University while working as a teaching assistant. After that, I received Margarita Salas and Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowships to conduct research at the University of Granada. I have also undertaken research stays at the universities of Antwerp, Yale, Tilburg, and Oxford. My research interests lie in the field of moral psychology, with a particular focus on topics such as blame, empathy, moral motivation, moral reasoning and self-deception. I am also interested in applied ethics, particularly in mental health ethics and the ethics of emotion, especially from the framework of epistemic and affective justice