In this paper we discuss from an interdisciplinary approach the affectation of the reproductive rights of women during pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium care in two departments of Uruguay in the context of the COVID 19 pandemic. The study was carried out in the cities of Montevideo and Paysandú since there are two Schools of Midwives. What is presented is part of an ongoing investigation "Reproductive rights and the Covid-19 pandemic: obstacles and challenges for full citizenship" financed by the Sectoral Commission for Scientific Research of the Universidad de la República of Uruguay. We are interested in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the health system -especially of the midwifery profession- to protect these rights, as well as investigating women's strategies to improve their transit through maternal health care.
We position ourselves from a gender, feminist and intersectional approach. The methodology is ethnographic in nature, focused on the voice of midwives, midwifery students, and assisted women between March 2020 and December 2021. Linking the experiences of women and midwives allows visualizing routinized practices, and different strategies and resistances deployed, both of those who attend and of those who are assisted. For this reason, we seek to generate empirical data that responds to a certain context but that allows problematizing structural conditions of childbirth care. The preliminary results show that there were structural violations of the reproductive rights of women, which were worsened by the conditions of assistance in Covid. The right to be accompanied in ultrasounds, childbirth and cesarean section was violated. There was growth in obstetric violence due to conditioning by the Covid protocols. It is also seen that the midwifery profession had some technical potential to improve the transit of women in situations of pregnancy and childbirth in the context of a pandemic.
