“Who Holds the Harm?” Obstetric Violence, Birth Trauma, and a System That Protects Itself.
What happens when reproductive care causes more harm than healing? What do we do when the space where someone is expected to be respected, believed, and protected, during a birth, miscarriage, IUD insertion, or surgery, becomes the source of long-lasting trauma?
For perinatal mental health professionals, this is not an abstract issue. We hold these stories every day.
And in the recent case of Dr. Esther Park, the public is now hearing what we’ve known all along: when harm occurs in reproductive healthcare, it’s rarely acknowledged, let alone repaired.
A Pattern of Harm
Dr. Park was an OBGYN in Toronto who retired in April 2025 after multiple complaints and cases of medical malpractice were brought forward. Earlier this year, news broke that over 2,500 of her patients may have been exposed to hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV due to improperly cleaned medical tools used at her office. Thousands were left anxiously awaiting results, not knowing whether their reproductive care had put their lives at risk.
To the best of our knowledge, no infections have been confirmed. But we cannot overlook the psychological toll: the panic, betrayal, and shame that many people feel when their trust in a provider is shattered.
And it didn’t end there.
In this powerful CBC article, former patients describe years of medical neglect, lack of informed consent, and lasting trauma from their encounters with Dr. Park. Many of them were new to Canada, already navigating a system that wasn’t built with their voices in mind.
These stories are devastating, but unfortunately, not rare.
What Perinatal Mental Health Workers Already Know
We know trauma isn’t just the event; it’s what happens after the event. It’s being disbelieved. It’s realizing that the systems meant to protect you instead protect the person who harmed you.
The CPSO (College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario) has a limited scope of disciplinary action, primarily involving the revocation of licenses. But in this case, Dr. Park is already retired. So what happens to the patients? Who holds their harm?
Even more troubling is that the CPSO does not require doctors to report concerns about their colleagues’ care. Even when other medical professionals suspected something was wrong, and they saw damage, questioned procedures, or noticed patterns, they weren’t required to speak up.
Instead, the burden to report always falls on the patient, often someone who is postpartum, new to the Canadian healthcare system, traumatized, or overwhelmed.
Obstetric Violence Is a Public Health Crisis
The term for what many of these patients experienced is obstetric violence: an internationally recognized form of gender-based violence that includes dehumanizing treatment, unnecessary interventions, and denial of informed consent in reproductive care.
As mental health professionals, we witness the impact on a daily basis.
Where Do We Go From Here?
There are solutions. In the CBC article, malpractice lawyer Paul Harte suggests routine monitoring and proactive inspection programs for physicians involved in invasive procedures, something that could have flagged Dr. Park’s harmful practices years earlier.
There is also something to be said about the lack of transparency in which the CPSO, like many other professional colleges, operates. Ultimately, colleges should serve the larger society by ensuring that physicians and surgeons operate in a manner that upholds the standards of care that patients in Ontario and Canada, as a whole, deserve. Currently, patients feel that they are left in the dark, without acknowledgment of the harm they suffered, the wrong they experienced, and the malpractice that occurred.
We recognize that physicians and healthcare providers will occasionally make mistakes. That’s inevitable. But continued harm, shielded by systems that refuse transparency or accountability, is not inevitable. That is a choice.
We can do better. And we must.