Excessive medical intervention in childbirth

While a small proportion of women require dramatic surgical intervention to deliver a baby, most mothers require none of the expensive overprecautions used as normal maternity care. The movement of midwives and home birthing training have created a healthy alternative to the terrifying experience of hospitalization, overmedication and regimentation that surround the birthing process in most developed countries.

1. A desire by women for less medical intervention in childbirth could well mean a return to the widespread loss of lives during, before and after childbirth which was common as recently as 50 years ago. As a prominent obstetrician remarked, "If (women) don't wish to go by what we will do, they will make their own decision and that will be on their own heads".

1. Violation of the rights of unborn children
2. Birth trauma

1. Precipitate or ill-judged forceps delivery
2. Planned early births
3. Alienating child-birth environments

1. Resistance to incorporating midwives in medical care systems
2. Prohibitive medical expenses
3. Denial of the right to medical consent
4. Death and disability from inhumane confinement
5. Birth injuries

1. Pride
2. Over-specialization in medical care
3. Male bias of medicine
4. Lack of diversity in medical science
5. Increase in insurance claims for medical negligence
6. Complications of childbirth

1. Voluntary physical suffering
2. Irrational conscientious refusal of medical intervention
3. Exaggerated reliance on professionalized services

1. Superstition
2. Medical treatment for non-medical conditions
3. Inadequate maternal and child health care

1. Intervention
2. Excess