Childbirth in a Technocratic Age: The Documentation of Women’s Ex ...

means violating her childbirth expectations? Furthermore, how could a mother reasonably claim any misgivings about expectations gone awry as long as her baby, the “end product,” arrived in good condition?

According to available statistics, more intervention does not seem to have kept mothers and newborns any safer: Maternal health has re-mained unchanged alongside increased procedures over the past three to four decades, with fewer than 1,000 U.S. mothers dying in childbirth per year² (Hoyert, 2007) since the 1970s. Severe childbirth-related morbidities (complications) such as hemorrhage, serious infection, blood clots, and uterine rupture have remained constant since 1998, occurring in 3–6% of annual births, or over 100,000 women (Clark et al., 2008; Kuklina et al., 2009). And neonatal health—infant mortality, preterm birth, and low birth weight—has worsened slightly over the past several decades alongside increased obstetric intervention (MacDorman, & Mathews, 2008; United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & Health Resources and Services Administration, 2009), particularly cesarean delivery (see chapter 5). Moreover, evidence of climbing obstetric intervention rates among young healthy and less healthy mothers alike contradicts any argument that more intervention is necessary to treat an increasingly obese or older maternal population.

At the time of their development, most aggressive obstetric interventions (e.g., labor acceleration and cesarean delivery) were designed to treat mothers and newborns at high risk of imminent peril. More recently, however, those same interventions have been downgraded for use in otherwise healthy, normal, low-risk cases. For example, labor induction was once reserved for the minute percentage of mothers whose pregnancies had exceeded 41 weeks, but the procedure has been extended to patients in whom only minor or even no complications exist, such as mothers whose amniotic fluid is judged low or who simply wish to bring the pregnancy to an end. In other words, increased intervention has not translated into any striking benefits in terms of maternal or newborn safety because those on the receiving end were just as safe or safer before the intervention.