A few weeks ago, I read an older book titled Woman-Centered Pregnancy and Birth. I marked the following quote to share because I thought it succinctly summed up one of the primary issues in maternity care:
"The major problem which arose almost as soon as physicians started attending women in birth is the same problem which exists today in obstetrics: physicians use their medical techniques when they are not really necessary and their technology and practices often create more problems than they solve. It is possible to appropriately apply this criticism to nearly every form of technology which has been used by physicians on women in birth from the 1500's to the present."
I also noted an observation from the book Birth Tides: Turning Towards Homebirth: "To these people, it seems as thought the medical system has been reduced to a form of social control. [Another woman] makes the point, however, that controlling women has always been an intrinsic part of antenatal care."
I think the recent AMA resolutions I've posted about and the situation with private midwifery in Australia lend credence to the idea that the medical system is a form of social control!
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Molly
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You know what I'm looking for? Theories on how hospitalization of birth in the US and standardization of maternity care ties in with the start of Blue Cross in the 30's, the Great Depression (and economic recovery period) and nationalism/xenophobia of the same time period. If you can WITNESS the births, you can decide who is a real citizen and can have access to scarce resources and jobs. Plus, it would be harder for someone to live in some kind of de facto sovereign state and not pay taxes.
Hospitals facilitate birth certificate and Social Security registration because births are witnessed within. Ever wonder if there's some kind of anti-immigrant undercurrent to that?
I write this to you on my robot computer machine from my shack in the woods.
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