Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
According to writer and editor Block (Our Bodies, Ourselves), "the United States has the most intense and widespread medical management of birth" in the world, and yet "rank[s] near the bottom among industrialized countries in maternal and infant mortality." Block shows how, in transforming childbirth into a business, hospitals have turned "procedures and devices developed for the treatment of abnormality" into routine practice, performed for no reason than "speeding up and ordering an unpredictable...process"; for instance, the U.S. cesarean section rate tripled in the 1970s, and has doubled since then. Block looks into a growing contingent of parents-to-be exploring alternatives to the hospital-and the attendant likelihood of medical intervention-by seeking out birthing centers and options for home-birth. Unfortunately, obstacles to these alternatives remain considerable-laws across the U.S. criminalizing or severely restricting the practice of midwifery have led the trained care providers to practice underground in many states-while tort reform has done next to nothing to lower malpractice insurance rates or improve hospital birthing policies. This provocative, highly readable expose raises questions of great consequence for anyone planning to have a baby in U.S., as well as those interested or involved in women?s health care. (June) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Review by Library Journal Review
Hospital births today may mean continuous fetal monitors, limited mobility, medications to manage labor, episiotomies, and a good chance at a cesarean section, often with little opportunity for the mother to express her own personal wishes. Why are so many C-sections performed in the United States? How many, if any, birthing choices are dependent on liability issues or convenience? What are the possible consequences for low-risk mothers seeking a more natural birthing experience in their own home? Block (former editor, Ms.; coeditor, Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era) asks all of these questions and answers with a stirring discussion of reproductive rights, informed consent, and the rights of the mother vs. the fetus. Although obviously in favor of fewer medical interventions, Block does a reasonable job of presenting other points of view. This complement to Marsden Wagner's Born in the USA is recommended for public, academic, and health science libraries.-Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida Lib., St. Petersburg (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Some terrible truths about being born in the USA. Were there ever any doubts as to the personal being political, this former editor at Ms. and editor of the revised Our Bodies, Ourselves convincingly lays them to rest in a gripping expos of American obstetrics. With extensive field research and thorough historical contextualization, Block reveals some disturbing statistics in this country's birth management and shows how medical views of birth are as subject to change as the whims of fashion. Current interventionist trends in obstetrician-centered care have yielded the ironic phenomenon of natural childbirth in the U.S. becoming an almost anomalous event. Block shows that, in the United States, "well over half of labors are chemically induced or augmented," and "two-thirds of women have their water broken manually"; two years ago, nearly a third of women gave birth by cesarean section, and of those delivering vaginally, another third had an episiotomy. Yet preterm births are rising, cerebral palsy rates remain constant and "women are 70% more likely to die in childbirth in the United States than in Europe." Why? Because, Block argues, what's deemed safe changes: "In the age of evidence-based medicine...care is constrained and determined by liability and financial concerns, by a provider's licensing regulations and malpractice insurance. The evidence often has nothing to do with it." Somewhere along the line, probably when barring midwives from the delivery room came into vogue, the notion that "what's best for women is best for babies" was lost; that message Block hopes to deliver anew to her readers. A provocative and hotly controversial analysis of a side of reproductive rights feminism seems to have forgot. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
