Article Text
Abstract
Pregnancy care is chargeable for migrants who do not have indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Women who are not ‘ordinarily resident’, including prospective asylum applicants, some refused asylum-seekers, unidentified victims of trafficking and undocumented people are required to pay substantial charges in order to access antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal services as well as abortion care within the National Health Service. In this paper, we consider the ethical issues generated by the exclusion of pregnancy care from the raft of services which are free to all. We argue that charging for pregnancy care amounts to sex discrimination, since without pregnancy care, sex may pose a barrier to good health. We also argue that charging for pregnancy care violates bodily autonomy, entrenches the sex asymmetry of sexual responsibility, centres the male body and produces health risks for women and neonates. We explore some of the ideological motivations for making maternity care chargeable, and suggest that its exclusion responds to xenophobic populism. We recommend that pregnancy care always be free regardless of citizenship or residence status, and briefly explore how these arguments bear on the broader moral case against chargeable healthcare for migrants.
- Women
- reproductive medicine
- obstetrics and gynaecology
- allocation of health care resources
- sexuality/gender
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Healthcare access for children and families on the move and migrants
- Gestational weight gain in a migration context: are migrant women more at risk of inadequate or excessive weight gain during pregnancy?
- Experience of and access to maternity care in the UK by immigrant women: a narrative synthesis systematic review
- ‘Inglan is a bitch’: hostile NHS charging regulations contravene the ethical principles of the medical profession
- Community-based doula support for migrant women during labour and birth: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial in Stockholm, Sweden (NCT03461640)
- Community-based doulas for migrant and refugee women: a mixed-method systematic review and narrative synthesis
- Maternal and infant outcomes of Syrian and Palestinian refugees, Lebanese and migrant women giving birth in a tertiary public hospital in Lebanon: a secondary analysis of an obstetric database
- Risk of sexually transmitted infections and violence among indoor-working female sex workers in London: the effect of migration from Eastern Europe
- A feasibility study evaluating the uptake, effectiveness and acceptability of routine screening of pregnant migrants for latent tuberculosis infection in antenatal care: a research protocol
- Contraceptive use among migrant, second-generation migrant and non-migrant women seeking abortion care: a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in Sweden