A $3.5 billion maternity care problem; another Catholic hospital gets to expand and limit its services to women; female domestic partners on their babies’ birth certificates; and Wal-Mart’s wage discrimination case.
A study shows that expectant mothers in California may face more constrained choices in childbirth depending on whether they choose a non-profit or for-profit hospital.
The evidence continues to point to the negative impacts of unnecessary medical intervention during childbirth. Studies confirm that not only does labor induction lead to increased c-section rates but that the rate of induction is growing, to the detriment of the health of mothers and babies, as well.
Good news from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) yesterday. The group issued updated guidelines on vaginal birth after cesareans (VBACs), hopefully paving the way for more women to choose vaginal birth, after a previous c-section.
Since tomorrow, May 5, is the International Day of the Midwife, I thought it fitting to take a moment to both acknowledge the day and why it’s so important to me to link discussions about midwifery and childbirth to the broader reproductive and sexual health and rights movement in the U.S.
Indifference to maternal mortality is closely related to indifference to women’s reproductive rights.
Anyone whose work focuses on getting enough medical care to third world women should do it with the knowledge of the experiences of American women. Otherwise their stance becomes pro-cesarean and not pro-evidence-based-medicine. It indicates the ignorance of thinking American healthcare is the best healthcare, and promotes the least cost-effective and most inefficient model of maternity care in developing countries
Women are not “electing” to put their babies at risk by choosing c-section. Women being backed into a corner and told what’s best, then publicly shamed for “asking for it.”
