Women's Studies 325: Issues in Women's Health

               Before I really became familiar with the birthing process, I’ve always just assumed that if I chose to have children in the future, I would have them in a hospital. Hospitals are like a ‘safe zone’ for me. I have always felt like if something went wrong, I’d be taken care of. I never questioned why something would go wrong because I always assumed that it would go wrong because of my body. There are several pros to having a hospitalization during labor, but I feel like they are all about how comfortable the woman is with having her child in the hospital and the safety of the child.

                I feel like ‘pro-choice’ is not strictly in regards to abortion rights, but also birthing rights. It’s the woman’s right to choose how to have her child because it’s her body and that human growing inside her is a part of her body. If her pregnancy is going to be a risky birth, it would be in the best interest of both the mother and the child to have the birth in a hospital because of all of the resources that you may not have at a home birth. There are “increased hazards resulting from the use of obstetrical medication and obstetrical tampering which are more likely to occur in hospital environment” (584). I also feel like the happiness of the moment and the love connection is hindered because it becomes such an unnatural process of drug after drug to induce, to numb, to deliver. It just seems the hospital process of birthing takes out the intimacy of the situation and takes control away from the mother.

                Home births should not be feared and we should promote this through taking the fear away and promoting information about it. Women’s bodies have been squeezing babies out for thousands and thousands of years, because their bodies know what to do. That’s how we have a population. It just seems like common sense to a point, like why wouldn’t someone want to have a natural birth?  Some cultural stereotypes that go along with mid-wives and at home births are that it’s unsafe and the midwife is less qualified than an OB/GYN. “Midwives’ training emphasizes skills which help women have healthy outcomes with as little intervention as possible,” (590-591) and that just seems like the way it should be. We, in the United States, need to get more information out about the facts of midwifery and eliminate the idea of a woman coming in who doesn’t know what she’s doing. In a pro-choice OB/GYN office, they should make this option available and not withhold any information from the women about their bodies and their unborn child.