Courtroom Mama

Posts Written by Courtroom

By Courtroom Mama • 13 years ago

A New Documentary from Al Jazeera for Cesarean Awareness Month

A new short documentary from Al Jazeera English, Birthrights: The Risk of Choice, examines the prevalence and safety of cesarean sections in the United States.

The film profiles many of the stakeholders in the maternity care system: a couple who must travel a long distance in search of a provider who will attend a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) labor, the Ob/Gyn who attends the birth, maternity care consumer advocate Jill Arnold, founder of The Unnecesarean, members of a local International Cesarean Awareness Network chapter, family members of a woman who died from a complication of cesarean surgery, and a woman who decided to have elective repeat cesarean deliveries rather than undertake the risks of VBAC.

This documentary provides a useful primer on issues in modern maternity care for the uninitiated, giving due respect to the medical, social, and emotional factors that play into women’s decision making about childbirth. One issue that is briefly discussed but is unfortunately too large and multifacted to fit into a 30-minute segment is the role of defensive medicine. For those interested in learning more, The Unnecesarean delved into the issue earlier this year with Defending Ourselves Against Defensive Medicine, a weeklong series of posts from stakeholders and advocates in maternity care.

Cross-posted ...

By Courtroom Mama • 13 years ago

Do Rights Right Wrongs? Venezuela Lacks Infrastructure to Combat Violence

Like birth, the law is a subject swathed in a constant fog of confusion and misinformation. Previously, I was convinced that this was a trick of the legal profession to keep themselves employed and maintain the scarcity of legal expertise. Now that I’ve been inducted into the club, I realize that the truth is that the answers are, in fact, murky and often unsatisfactory. An area that seems to come up perennially is the question of “rights” in birth – does the provider have a right to do x? does a woman have a right to do/refuse y? I love to be able to tell people what they want to hear, but anyone who followed ...

By Courtroom Mama • 14 years ago

Cesarean Awareness Month: Why We Should Care

April is Cesarean Awareness Month , sponsored by the International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN). Founded in 1982 by Esther Booth Zorn when the cesarean rate was in the range of 16-20%, ICAN’s mission is to “improve maternal-child health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing support for cesarean recovery, and promoting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC)”—all the more relevant now that the National Center for Health Statistics reports an all-time high cesarean rate of 32%. This grassroots organization, along with many others, has given a voice to the growing number of women who have experienced their cesarean surgery as frightening or even traumatic because it was complicated, unexpected, or unwanted. In the same way that many ...

By Courtroom Mama • 14 years ago

Ambivalence about motherhood: a criminal act?

This case from Iowa is a spine-tingling example of the ways that feticide laws, ostensibly created to protect pregnant women and punish late-term abortion, can go awry. Police accused Christine Taylor, an Iowa mother of two, of trying to kill her fetus when she fell down the stairs. According to Ms. Taylor, she was crying and hyperventilating after a distressing conversation with her estranged huband, and fell down a flight of stairs. Although paramedics said she was fine, she went to the emergency room out of concern for her fetus. While there, she admitted to hospital personnel that she had not wanted to be pregnant and had considered adoption and abortion rather than raising a third child as a ...

By Courtroom Mama • 14 years ago

Arizona Mom Threatened with Court Order for Refusing Unnecessary Surgery

You would think that after having delivered two babies vaginally–one after a cesarean section–Joy Szabo’s ability to give birth is sufficiently proven.

Not so, according to Page Hospital of Page, Arizona, where Mrs. Szabo delivered all three of her babies (including the one VBAC), but now faces an unnecessary and unwanted “elective” cesarean for her fourth. Page recently enacted a ‘VBAC ban,’ a policy that is more appropriately referred to as a “denial of service for women with prior cesarean unless they preauthorize surgery” since a vaginal birth is not so much a “procedure” that a hospital can elect to perform or not, but rather is a biological process which they can attend or not attend, but will happen either ...

You would think that after having delivered two babies vaginally–one after a cesarean section–Joy Szabo’s ability to give birth is sufficiently proven.

Not so, according to Page Hospital of Page, Arizona, where Mrs. Szabo delivered all three ...

By Courtroom Mama • 15 years ago

Just cut on the dotted line…

It’s not quite clear to me how the company that makes t-shirts and whatnot with this logo:

would also make ones with this logo:

Maybe it’s because I wanted to be part of Column A but ended up being coerced into Column B, or maybe it’s because I see this as perpetuating the myth of the Status Caesarean, but I think it’s just plain gauche.

I am curious to hear what other people have to say, because I think that a lot of feminists view elective caesareans and unassisted birth as value-free points on a continuum of equally-valid birth choices. I can’t say that I really agree, as the astronomical rate of medical interventions and women’s accounts of feeling "rushed" or "pressured" ...

It’s not quite clear to me how the company that makes t-shirts and whatnot with this logo:

would also make ones with this logo:

Maybe it’s because I wanted to be part of Column A but ended up ...