Based on the questioning of the role of the medical profession in hindering the construction of an agenda to combat obstetric violence in Brazil, this research aimed to analyze the actions of the organized medical profession in opposition to the movement to humanize childbirth during the Jair Messias Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022). Using the discussion on reproductive governance and studies on gender “backlash” as a theoretical framework, with emphasis on the relational dynamics between movements and counter-movements, the dispute over childbirth and forms of medical care appeared as a dispute over the state, which mobilizes questions about plurality, participation, citizenship and recognition of demands by different subjects. Realizing that an important part of this dispute takes place in the discursive field, where signification and silencing represent the conformation of different interests, I use discourse analysis of documents from medical organizations published between 2012 and 2022 as a tool of research and analysis. I point out that the strategy of silencing by the medical profession from 2019 onwards takes place through mechanisms of democratic regression, translating into discursive delegitimation, reformulation of public policies linked to humanized childbirth and the erosion of mechanisms of inclusion and accountability. I conclude that by seeking to depoliticize the agenda in favour of respectful childbirth, the medical profession is acting to ensure the perpetuation of its authority at the expense of the autonomy of pregnant and parturient women. The reprivatization of the issue of obstetric violence is close to what has been seen as a neoliberal trend of state de-responsibility and, by being operationalized during a far-right government, shows the authoritarian contours of state selectivity.