Just as Hilary noted in her post, I found the readings for tomorrow’s class somewhat interesting, but ultimately frustrating and confusing. I really like the idea of an assignment including an article and a subsequent response of disagreement to the initial article. However, after reading both articles, I only became lost and annoyed with a seeming muddle of opposing facts and stances with no coherent final conclusion to what I had read. One article, “The Score: How childbirth went industrial” by Atul Gawande, largely supported obstetric methods while the other article, written by Henci Goer, serves as an opposition article arguing for natural childbirth.
I definitely had never before thought so extensively about childbirth methods as these articles forced me to. Personally, I sort of just assumed that c-sections were performed when there was an emergency or when the parents, for whatever reason, preferred that method. I also assumed that vaginal childbirth was the most common birthing method. I never thought about the possible detrimental effects related with cesarean section style births as being any worse than those related with natural childbirth. Instead, I took for granted possible dangerous and deadly side effects related with any pregnancy and childbirth. I think that despite Gawande’s push for “institutionalized” birth practices and Goer’s argument for natural childbirths, every pregnancy calls for a different approach.
Therefore, while institutionalized birth approaches are definitely smart as they create a basic and reliable method for delivering babies-a process that should not be sort of understood by doctors -a single approach is not appropriate for every mother and every baby. In other words, I find complete institutionalization of child birth naïve and dangerous (in the situation that a non-standard pregnancy situation were to arise).
However, I also do not agree with Goer’s stance that non-natural processes are entirely overused and inferior to natural vaginal childbirth. I agree that there must be a degree of care taken in the decision of whether or not to perform obstetric practices during childbirth. As Goer suggests, a “cavalier attitude” (Goer, 8) towards unnecessary surgery and drugging is dangerous and potentially destructive. However, I do not agree that natural childbirth is always the answer.“we are losing our connection to yet another natural process of life,” (Gawande, 10). I appreciate that he recognizes a potential flaw of obstetric births. However, many childbirths would result in death of the child and/or the mother if it weren’t for the obstetric techniques that have been developed over recent decades. While a happy medium should be found between natural and clinical childbirths, completely ignoring advances in medicine would be illogical and dangerous for many mothers and babies.
I think that Goer largely tries to ignore the beneficial aspects of methods and birthing practices such as cesarean sections and the epidural. Throughout his entire piece, I felt he was bashing clinical childbirth without even mentioning or acknowledging the amazing feats it is capable of. In not acknowledging the positive outcomes of obstetric childbirth methods, I felt that Goer’s argument was too extreme, and he therefore, lost credibility and respect in my eyes. He is so focused and intent on proving his point, he seemed willing to stretch the truth or ignore some of the reality. Further, despite the statistics he did provide, I was still not convinced by the end of Goer’s article.
As Hilary noted, the idea of sisterhood and women helping each other is a really good suggestion. Through many aspects of our life, we need a support system and pregnancy is, without a doubt, one of those stages in life. Further, the help of a woman, who understands at least somewhat our situation, has potential to drastically improve the pregnancy and childbirth process.
Additionally, I think that the intense and wide array of ideas displayed in these two articles is evidence to the fact that every woman experiences something different, and doctors must be prepared to act as such. I found it somewhat hypocritical of Goer to reprimand obstetric techniques as becoming too “industrialized” and standardized while he simultaneously called for natural childbirth in almost every situation. He wanted to maintain the “art” of childbirth, however he hoped for a dramatic decrease in some of the most creative and thought through methods of childbirth. As I noted in my post about a woman’s right to abortion, each woman has different circumstances and therefore, a different solution as to what is right. We cannot ignore the fact that there is not a single right answer to any of these debates. Women deserve recognition that each individual needs and wants something personal and different.
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