How you give birth is part of being pro-choice too

What’s up with all the labor and delivery stigma and mom shaming with progressives? It’s like, ok do anything you want for the first few months of pregnancy–vacuum that baby right out if you like! But as soon as you’re in the third trimester you’d better be “breathing” that baby out into a bathtub surrounded by candles or you are a terrible mother!!

What’s really bizarre about it is all the people who barely know me, have 0 idea about my medical situation, 0 medical training/background, and 0 interest in having kids themselves are suddenly very keen on explaining to me how I should give birth, and making all sorts of crazy assumptions about people based on how they give birth (e.g. “women who get cesareans are just lazy!” Umm so undergoing a major surgery that will take months to heal from under terrifying circumstances is lazy now?).

Natural birth enthusiasts point to correlations between medical interventions and adverse birth outcomes. Well, of course there is a correlation because people typically seek intervention in high risk or emergency situations! But if you look at controlled trials, the voluntary use of induction and pain management are generally not associated with adverse outcomes.

For instance, Induction at 39-40 weeks is preferable for mom and baby health outcomes to waiting into “late term” for the baby to come “naturally” and that there is no risk to baby for epidurals other than a “statistically significant but not medically relevant” delay in nursing latch onset (omg, he’s gonna take 10 extra minutes to latch onto my boob! Obviously I should decline the epidural and just breathe through that 4th degree perineal tear).

“But I read x y and z on naturalmoms.com!”

No no no hun. Shh. Show me the controlled clinical trial on Pubmed and then I’ll listen. Or not. I thought we progressives were all about women’s reproductive rights, right???

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25882916,https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25040829,https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25300169)