I often run into the “birth wars” mantra when I put on my “natural childbirth teacher” hat. My tongue is raw from the number of times I’ve bitten it to keep from saying something hurtful to a new mother who trusts the system without question.
Like the author of this article, I’m not very good at sitting on the fence. When I speak up about the dangers in our current model of obstetric care, I’m not doing it to hurt someone’s feelings. I’m doing it because we need information to change the system. To force medical schools to include natural birth in their training. To make LESS intervention the mantra of obstetrics.
The quotes I’ve included say it pretty well, but rest of the article is important, too.
“… the message that should be getting out there is this: women are being let down. Intervention rates are way too high, the true meaning of birth is getting lost in a medical experience, and far far too many women are having a difficult, unpleasant or traumatic birth when it could be oh so different.”
“But the guilt and the failure does not belong to women. It belongs to the system. The system is not any one individual, or even any one group of individuals. It is a culturally based, historically driven attitude to childbirth that has become so engrained that it is almost impossible for many people to perceive its failings or imagine another, better way.”
Birth wars just divert us from the facts: Childbirth is in crisis – Your Life News – Best Daily.
Marlene Dotterer 