The last one is a dud as well – routine screening of low risk women for gestational diabetes and with routine ultrasound has been pretty comprehensively shown to be unassociated with any change in pregnancy outcomes.

” First, tell the doctor the truth.”

This comment actually comes from a place of privilege, and while it sounds superficially attractive, it is not good advice for all women. If you are, for example, a poor woman of colour, telling your doctor that (for example) you had a drink or a joint or two in pregnancy could put you on the fast track to inappropriate scrutiny and child removal. Talking about a past history of psychiatric illness can do much the same (there has been a particularly terrible history of this in the UK).

Hear hear to Holly on point “R” – making sure you birth with a specialist doctor in a “high level” facility increases your chance of damaging interventions and unnecessary surgical birth dramatically. One-to-one care with a caseload midwife, consulting specialist doctors only where absolutely necessary, is the gold standard of care.

You know what’s sad? I saw the first line- The other day, I received a press release titled “It’s Riskier to Have a Baby in the U.S. Than in Cuba or the Czech Republic.”- and immediately said “Let me guess- They put all of the blame on women?” I hate being right, sometimes.

I wish more people could see health care in these terms. Having mothers and their children survive childbirth seems like one of the most fundamental concerns society and individuals could possibly have, but I hardly ever hear any mention of it.

That’s one heck of a lot of medical care for a condition that’s NOT an illness. The list assumes that “risk” comes from babies who aren’t some standard of “perfect” — or (as you suggest) mothers who aren’t some standard of “perfect”. Blegh.

Make childbirth safer and cheaper? Put all births in the hands of midwives in midwifery/birthing facilities (within or close by to a medical center, great) and let OBs handle only high-risk deliveries. (If you are not a high-risk case, the chance of you and your baby dying in the hospital is greater than of you and your baby dying at home.) Sort of a no-brainer, and definitely an issue well covered and brilliantly argued by feminist scholars. It’s not that women don’t have health care to get coverage… it’s that they are only allowed to get certain coverage to see certain types of providers. There is no “choice” in reproduction, at any point in the process.