k The Beginning
Promoting Maternal Choice The obstetrical profession has recently begun promoting the 'maternal choice', or medically unnecessary cesarean as the ideal form of childbirth. Scheduled surgery permits the practice of 'daylight obstetrics' while maximizing the physician's time and economic compensation. Many doctors predict that within the next 10 – 15 years, scheduled cesarean delivery will replace spontaneous vaginal birth as the obstetrical standard. Unfortunately, this major abdominal surgery is also associated with a 2 to 4-fold increase in preventable maternal deaths and many delayed or downstream complications. Maternal mortality associated with vaginal birth is rare — only one out of 16,666. To put this number in perspective, auto accident fatalities for women of childbearing age are one out of 5,000, so it is more than 3 times safer to give birth normally than to travel in a car. However, when cesarean sections are performed, the maternal death rate jumps to 1 out of 3,225 or six times more dangerous than normal vaginal birth. To put elective cesarean in perspective, consider that terrorist-related deaths for Israeli citizens is only one per 10,000, making scheduled cesarean surgery three times more dangerous to childbearing women than living in the midst of the Israeli-Palestine conflict and 6 times more dangerous than normal birth. In addition, there are some serious, sometimes fatal problems for babies delivered by cesarean, such as surgical lacerations, surgery-related prematurity and respiratory distress. To assume that normal biology is itself dangerous is a serious misunderstanding of normal childbearing. This regrettable attitude held by the obstetrical profession culminates in the politics of the pre-emptive strike and the hair trigger. For healthy women, the greatest risk associated with normal labor and birth is not the rare unpreventable complication of normal biology but the frequent preventable complications stemming from the routine use of electronic monitors, iv's, immobilizing laboring women in bed, routine use of uterine stimulants to accelerate labor,narcotics, anesthesia, surgical procedures and surgical instruments. Obstetrical intervention makes normal childbirth into a war zone for healthy women and their babies.