Obstetrican Refuses to Increase Her Cesarean Rate

Many articles cross my desk in any given week, most bring frustration from lack of research on the part of the reporter, and some even brilliant. One such article, which also covered a very exciting surprise that I had hoped would happen, is about an obstetrician in North Carolina. She is moving to Mississippi because the hospital she works in told her to perform more cesareans and she will not. I am surprised it took so long for a physician to stand up and take a stand like this, though I know how terribly difficult it is to work in the political minefield of modern medicine. I have worked with some incredible obstetricians and family physicians who have asked us attending to not mention their avoiding "routine" procedures that are highly unnecessary though expected standard of care. Where hospitals would not stand up against ACOG's decision to take choices away from birthing women to reduce their malpractice risk, women and physicians are. Bravo!

ICAN is also working on an important paper on women's rights and legal options regarding cesarean section. Where women are told they have no options regarding VBAC, women indeed have every right to labour and birth as their body was designed, not through a surgical incision in their abdomen, if they so choose. The coercion rampant across the US by physicians and hospitals will not stop tomorrow, but women making informed decisions about their care will turn the tide and show the true face of ACOG. As Dr. Marsden Wagner stated in Critique of ACOG Practice Bulletin No. 5, 1999, “ACOG is not a college in the sense of an institution of higher learning, nor is it a scientific body. It is a “professional organization” that in reality is one kind of trade union. Like every trade union, ACOG has two goals: promote the interests of its members, and promote a better product (in this case, well-being of women). But if there is conflict between these two goals, the interests of obstetricians come first.”