Abstract

Like in most other industrialized countries, childbirth in Israel is defined in medical terms and takes place mainly in hospital. Nonetheless, its medicalization is extreme along a number of parameters. For example, other than a privately funded home birth, there are no alternatives to hospital birth; and birth as currently managed in Israeli hospitals has been described as among the most medicalized in the world. Most notable, however, is a local legislative provision (originally section 30(a) of the Law of National Insurance [1953]) that establishes the entitlement of every Israeli birthing mother to a Birth Grant—but only on the condition that she have herself hospitalized in connection with the birth. Notwithstanding the significant limitations this puts upon their freedom of choice in childbirth, few Israeli women have ever probed the existence of this unique law or sought its demise. This article seeks to explain this accepting behavior on the part of Israeli women, as well as the contours taken on by the local birth culture more generally, on the basis of another notable characteristic of Israeli society—militarism. More specifically, it raises the hypothesis that in Israeli society, hospital childbirth, that is, childbirth in the manner prescribed by the state, is considered women's national service, parallel to military conscription for men. The possible implications of this military–maternity analogy for the (equal) rights of birthing women are also examined.

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