A Culture of Life

So I just finished reading Jennifer Block’s book “Pushed,” and I have to say that I loved it! The only thing about the book that is a little annoying is that it is written specifically within the context of the American Healthcare System. Block did make reference to Canadian Studies, and I’ve finished this book with a lot of direction with regards to bibliography and my future research.

What is the most disturbing to me is the fact that so many women are being forced into the operating room for unwanted C-Sections. In fact, some women in the states actually receive court orders to undergo C-Sections. The C-Section rate in the US is incredibly high, sometimes as high as 40%... why are so many women undergoing C-Sections? Block tells us that it has to do with Liability. For example, Doctor’s Malpractice Insurance will not cover Vaginal Birth after a Cesarean (VBAC) which forces women who have one C-Section to have C-Sections for all subsequent births.

Block really provides an eye-opening and through discussion of childbirth practices in the western world, however, my favorite part of the book was the last chapter entitled “Rights” which actually discussed the way in which birthing women’s needs are continually circumvented by insurance policies. This was interesting because Block actually ended up focusing an entire chapter on what I consider to be the main issue with modern maternity care: the issue of reproductive rights. Women are daily forced into surgery and procedures (think: episiotomy) that they do not consent to, but that doctors consider to be “necessary.” Women are continuously finding themselves in abusive situations, often characterizing their birth experience in the hospital as rape, or feeling like a piece of meat. This should not be the way any woman feels after her birth experience. I’ve written about this in a paper I submitted for one of my women’s studies classes this year, but I framed the problem within ethics and did not consider the issue of rights. I think that Block does an excellent job of questioning the ways in which women’s rights are being violated time and time again within a hospital birthing setting. She discusses a problem which I have been noticing lately, particularly with the discussion of Bill C-484 which would essentially give fetuses rights. Bill C-484 is called The Unborn Victims of Crime Act and would protect fetuses if a woman is killed and is pregnant at the time. The problem is however, that by giving unborn fetuses rights, we will be getting into issues of re-criminalizing abortions, and now as we broaden our spectrum a bit, we’ll see that women’s rights will be circumvented in the delivery room, disregarding women’s autonomy and doing only what is best for the baby.

Doctors always say “We want a healthy baby,” essentially trying to justify the intervention through guilt and fear. The goal should be happy healthy mothers- if we don’t take care of the mother then how is the baby going to be cared for? How can we allow major abdominal surgery to happen over and over again, sending traumatized mothers home to care for new babies with huge wounds that can take months to heal? What is going on? Women have “…the right to bodily integrity, to self-determination, to liberty, and to privacy” (Block 253) and yet we find these rights repeatedly violated and women going home traumatized.

Why are we as women allowing this to happen to us? Why are women standing for this? I certainly am not. Luckly, I am privileged enough to live in Ontario, where I have a “choice” for my birth experience. Namely, OHIP covers midwives as an option for birth, whereas in the US midwives are illegal in many states. Why a midwife would be illegal is beyond me. A midwife provides everything a woman in labour could need: comfort, advise, strength, coaching, and most importantly, allows the labouring woman’s body to guide the labour, rather than stats and charts discussing risks. The midwife has patience and compassion in a way that the hospital does not, and in the end, allows a labouring woman to have the birth experience at the end which she is so entitled to after such hard work! Every woman should get to experience that orgasm after their baby is born, where they just hold him and the love hormones are released and bonding can occur.

It is said that this release of hormones is crucial to mother-baby bonding. That it is crucial for breastfeeding, and that clamping of the umbilical cord should be delayed a few minutes once mother and baby have bonded and the rest of the blood in the umbilical cord (which is full of important nutrients) has entered the baby’s body. Not to mention that labour is so smart, that the pain is important to help women to know what angles and what positions to use to push, and when the baby is crowning, there is a special sequence of contractions which help the baby be ejected! Why would anyone want to be so meddlesome in such a perfectly designed event? This is what women’s bodies are designed for, and it is being taken away from us, snatched right out from under our noses.

We cannot stand for this, and need to make it an issue of reproductive rights. Block actually mentions her surprise that this issue has not garnered more of a response from bioethicists and reproductive rights organizations, however, as with the discussion of Bill C-484 in Toronto, the focus remains on abortion and birth control, not rights to actually reproduce the way we desire.

So, I would just like to end with some quotes from Block’s book which I thought were particularly compelling with regards to this question of rights:

“Adults seeking medical care have both the right to receive treatment ande right to refuse treatment, and they have the right to know the risks and benefits of each treatment option, including the option of no treatment at all. The legal term is informed consent.” (253)

“You can’t have a ‘culture of life’ if you don’t value the women who give that life.” (256)

“Autonomy is an unlimited, unimpeded negative right. A pregnant woman, any woman, has the right to refuse anything.” (258)

“You have the right to decide on abortion, you have a right to decide on contraception. Don’t you also have the right to decide where you have a baby, where you have your birth experience?” (263)

This last quote, to me, is the most profound. Why is it that feminists seem so hell-bent on making sure that abortion is legal and that contraception is easy to find and yet there is little to no feminist discourse with regards to the abusive treatment of women in labour? This book is definitely a call to action for me; right now I’m blogging in Southampton at the beach, with a very weak internet signal and no land line, however, when I return to Kitchener, I will be spending a significant amount of time doing some Canadian research on the topic- according to Block there is a Canadian Report on Maternal death due out this year, so I’ll have to see if it’s already been published, as well as call hospitals and ask them about their stats for particular interventions. Either way I will be blogging about Childbirth again… to me, it seems considerably more important than access to birth control or abortion… maybe it’s the stage I’m at in my life, but how can we really expect to have abortion access and birth control when women who actually want to give birth are unable to do so the way we want to? Millions of women give birth every day and leave hospitals traumatized and broken down, and still, our main focus of reproductive rights remains invested in abortion… this book is 100% a call to action, a call for revolution and time for women to make demands and demand access to alternatives, and their bodily integrity in childbirth to be respected, or rather, revered. It is a time to reevaluate what falls under the spectrum of reproductive rights, and quickly, maternity care needs to be saved!

Either way, if you’re interested in sources re: bibliography, or a more in depth conversation on this topic, let me know!