Homework 39

Christopher R 3/30/11
The main idea that both the book and the movie have taught me about the business of being born is that the main goal for doctors and nurses is to have the baby and then move on to the next person. Tactics like this have gotten certain people who are more devoted to the actual birthing experience upset. In the book I think this is most talked about in the midwifing section of the book where Madsen writes, “The nurse-midwife’s decision to leave the hospital was a predictable outcome. I know quite a few nurse mid-wives who have gotten tired of the prejudice they face in hospitals and have moved into-out of hospital practices” (Wagner 113). Another topic that the book discusses about being in the “business of being born” is the chapter that refers to, where and where not to have a child. Having a home birth versus having a hospital birth and ironically obstetricians and Gynecologists are the people who are talking about the dangers of having a home birth. “ACOG made its position official and published a recommendation against home birth: ‘Labor and delivery, while a physiological process, clearly presents potential hazards to both the mother and the fetus before and after birth” (Wagner 129).

The major insight that the book tries to communicate in the second 100 pages is more about how birth is done in America and he does this by continuing to question some of the motives of the hospital, and referring to better ways birth can be done. The criticisms of home birth, the legal protections that pregnant women have. I think that the most critical part to the argument that the book is trying to make which is America has a broken Maternity system is the way that the Obstetricians feel about the way birth is done. The chapter that talks about obstetric police gives the most insight to how the maternity system is. This part of the book makes it seem as if the doctors are villains because it ties in with the midwife argument. Showing that these doctors in hospitals are almost pushing away the midwives and freedom of the pregnant women which almost pushes away the humanity.
• Pushing away the idea of Home Birth pg. 126
• Pushing away the idea of Midwifing pg. 113
• The Legal Rights of Women pg. 172
• Getting Birth away from Hospitals (considering Hospitals are sometimes places people go to die) pg. 187
• Practices of Midwifery pg. 101
“However in 2005, in the case Meador v. Stabler and Gheridian, a jury awarded a 1.5 million dollar settlement to a Massachusetts woman and her husband for her undergoing a medically unnecessary C-Section.”

The $1.5 million award to a Massachusetts woman and her family in Meador v. Stahler and Gheridian made news as a rare instance of a malpractice judgment based on an allegedly unwanted and unnecessary cesarean section rather than a failure to perform such an operation.
The plaintiff, Mary Meador, did not claim that the procedure was negligently performed or that the rare and disabling physical complications that resulted from it (which left her largely bedridden and unable to work or meet her family responsibilities for several years) were foreseeable. Instead, she claimed that the defendant obstetricians had misrepresented the risks of the alternative procedure (vaginal birth after prior cesarean) and ignored her persistent pleas for this alternative. Moreover, she alleged, they compelled her passive assent to the surgery in an emotionally coercive manner while she was progressing normally in labor, despite their having previously agreed to such a trial of labor.