Foreword.(birth issue in America)

The thing about being an American who cares about birth issues, is that the grass really is greener everywhere else. Around here, the big debate is about whether there is any reason to offer women vaginal births at all. If you listen to the medical folks, you'd be thinking that women in droves are requesting cesarean sections to avoid the trauma of vaginal births, and if you raise an objection to 'elective cesareans' then clearly you have lost your feminist vision of choice.

It is, rest assured, not the case that American women have gone mad or somehow decided that having abdominal surgery is nicer than giving birth. Recent research (Beate Schucking, unpublished) in Boston--a high tech birth area if ever there was one, shows that more than 95% of the primiparous women do want vaginal births, and those that would 'choose' these medically uncalled for (even by current medical standards!) cesareans are a small subset of socially marginalised, depressed and anxious women. But the story one gets from the current media is quite different: women are demanding cesarean sections and, poor doctors, how can they deny women choice?

And it's not just random choice: it's about health, saving innocent babies. Checking the headlines this morning on my computer screen, I found this in the 'health headlines': Ore. (Oregon) Dad Saves Newborn after Home Birth (Netscape Health, August 24, 2006). Of course I read the story--no, it wasn't a planned home birth. A woman had a quick labour and pushed out a baby who didn't pink up instantly. Thank god the husband called 911 and they told him to clear her breathing passages, give her a few puffs of air, and--serious medical ...