Introduction

This introductory chapter welcomes its readers into a conversation about the dominant values and logics that currently animate the birth culture in the United States and in the contemporary West, and the controversial potentials of pleasures and their scholarships. Written to orient readers who are new to the sociocultural analyses of birth culture and reproductive justice frameworks, I have woven together some of my study participants’ narratives and history to sketch out the major historical frames and the strong cultural forces that have led to the current maternal health crisis both in the United States and in other countries, and to the hegemonic birth culture in which birthing people are currently struggling to thrive. Herein, I cover the basic contours of pleasurable births to ground the rich qualitative data to follow within the larger project of reproductive justice.