alexist

yesterday's Indy had a horrible article by Joanna Moorehead entitled "Drugs are for wimps". ("Epidurals are for wimps" on the website). It's not enough for her to be pro-natural birth; she has to look down on everyone who doesn't choose to do it. Why isn't it enough to say "yes, you can do this and this is how" rather than mocking women who felt they were unable to do it without drugs? (By the way, I wonder if the third-world women some campaigners hold up view childbirth as an enriching experience, or if they just view it as something to be got through. In the West, we're cushioned by the knowledge that we don't have to suffer the same risks, and that in an emergency we can spurn natural childbirth.)

There was also a rather frustrating article on the risk of Caesareans. Frustrating because it didn't address the issue of how much of the risk was due to the Caesarean itself. Many women undergoing Caesarian birth are higher risk patients to begin with. For that matter, a hospital's Caesarean rate is meaningless in and of itself--it has to be tracked to the patient intake. A hospital with a high Caesarean rate may not be doing anything different; it might just get more high risk cases.