Applying the Values of Modesty and Aurat in the Childbirth Experience

Childbirth is a deeply embodied experience in which clinical care intersects with women’s cultural, spiritual, and personal values. For Muslim women, modesty (haya’) and aurat are important in shaping perceptions of bodily privacy, dignity, autonomy, and psychological safety during labour and delivery. Despite growing attention to respectful maternity care, these dimensions remain insufficiently operationalised within institutional maternity practices. This study examines how modesty and aurat influence women’s physical, emotional, and psychological childbirth experiences; identifies environmental, institutional, and interpersonal factors affecting bodily privacy; and develops clinically oriented principles for faith-sensitive maternity care. A qualitative, library-based document analysis was conducted within an interpretive paradigm using peer-reviewed literature on childbirth, bodily privacy, gender preferences, respectful maternity care, and faith-sensitive healthcare. The documentary corpus was analysed thematically using Braun and Clarke’s framework. Three interrelated themes emerged: embodied modesty and relational autonomy; institutional and interpersonal negotiation of aurat; and operationalisation of modesty within faith-sensitive maternity care. The synthesis indicates that compromised privacy may intensify embarrassment, vulnerability, distress, and loss of control, whereas respectful practices can strengthen dignity, trust, emotional comfort, and participation in decision-making. Protection of aurat is therefore not solely an individual provider responsibility but an organisational issue shaped by maternity-unit design, staffing, communication, consent processes, and workflow. The article proposes an Aurat-Sensitive Respectful Maternity Care approach grounded in clinical necessity, minimum necessary exposure, relational consent, and institutional accountability. As a secondary document analysis, the study offers conceptual and practice-oriented synthesis rather than prevalence estimates or causal inference, and its propositions require empirical validation in maternity settings.

Aurat, Modesty, Respectful Maternity Care, Childbirth

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