This hospital has a c-section rate that is well above what the World Health Organization deems a safe c-section rate; if women are consenting to a c-section right off the bat (not to mention fetal heart-rate monitoring, antibiotics, episiotomies, and epidurals!) regardless of whether one is actually medically indicated, it’s certainly blurring the lines between what’s medically necessary and the power of suggestion from a medical “authority.” Where does an individual’s right to make an informed choice begin and hospital legal policy end?

— Does Refusing a C-Section = Child Abuse? [via]

It had never occurred to me before that a generalized fear of getting pregnant is a culturally and historically contingent state of mind. But, of course, it is.

— Is Pregnancy Scary?

One of the effects of the domination of medical science by men was the adoption of the male body as normal and of the female body as aberrant and less perfect. The female body was always contrasted with the perfect male body and the things that women’s bodies did differently were understood as being not ‘normal’ or not ‘right’. As a result, everything that women did differently was understood as illness. The female body became pathologically unwell (and there is some really interesting work on the way that Victorian women use illness as a means opting out of social normativity- like the being too constitutionally ill to ever marry and so justifying their life of singleness). Pregnancy in particular was understood as an illness and if you read Victorian newspapers, court cases or even literature you frequently come across references to women’s illness, like she was in bed unwell, or she was by the fire ill, and what they mean is she was pregnant, or occasionally in the period shortly after childbirth. As an illness, pregnancy became the domain of doctors (much like woman’s bodies more generally) and woman’s experiences or desires became less relevant as they were not the experts on illness. In this sense, women became completely detached from their pregnancy, which was no longer seen as a natural part of life for many women, but an aberration.

— A rather wordy history of childbirth. [via]

There are dozens and dozens of good economic and social reasons that women choose to terminate pregnancies that have nothing to do with expanding their “careers” — which is something not everyone in this country has the privilege to be able to aspire to. Too many women are too often just trying to scrape by, and an unwanted pregnancy (or child) is just going to add additional strain that it’s entirely possible they can’t handle. That’s the whole purpose of the Obama Administration’s purported focus on reducing the economic consequences of child-bearing, not to help women better shape their lucrative careers.

— Some People Underestimate The Economic Impact Of Abortion [via]