Book Review: Pushed

Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care by Jennifer Block is a book that I've wanted to read for quite a while.  It's difficult for me to find time to do personal reading, with being a mom and how books have a tendency to consume me...so I have to be strategic in when I start a new book.

Pushed was hard to get into at first.  There are a lot of acronyms, citations, and legal and medical terms and phrases.  Throughout the whole book I found myself reading the same sentence over and over again because of all of the "fluff," despite my knowledge in childbirth, background in science and my interest in the subject.  There was just a lot of extra stuff that was hard to get past.  Once I understood her style of writing, it got a little easier.  It was so interesting to learn how modern maternity care came to be.  She touches on most procedures: episiotomies, epidurals, forceps, c-sections, and the recent shift from midwife to OB and homebirth to hospital birth.

Toward the end of the book, however, I started to get less interested.  Part of it had to do with the fact that I was trying to finish the book on the day it was due, but she just started to get into politics, which can hardly hold my interest.  Two chapters ("Criminalized" and "Rights") focused on one midwife or story.  Block explains how some midwives have to avoid the law in order to practice, and she follows a midwife on her endeavor to give women the kind of birth they want, despite not being licensed (she was, but then she didn't renew her license because of local laws, and she had to fly "under the radar").  It was interesting...just a lot of detail.

The chapter "Rights" touched a lot on abortion, a topic that was mentioned - and supported - a few times throughout the book.  I've always considered myself to be pro-life, with few exceptions of when abortion should be allowed.  I'm also an advocate of women's rights, at the very least when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth.  But what I didn't realize is that these rights are connected.  This paragraph from the book is what generated this conflict I have with my beliefs:

Even Amber and John Marlowe, who narrowly escaped a court-ordered cesarean, see the right to a physiological birth in the context of their rights as citizens of a democracy.  Their belief in this is so strong that the couple, who believe in the Bible and believe that abortion is murder, traveled to Washington, DC, in April 2003 to march in the pro-choice "March for Women's Lives."  John Marlowe told me they marched because after Amber's ordeal, they realized that if the government can restrict a woman's right to abortion, then it can force a woman to have a cesarean.  "We don't believe in abortion for any reason, period.  But we marched pro-choice because this is America.  Are we going to be a majority that gives up our choices to a doctor or a politician?"

I'm not saying this changes my opinion on abortion - that will not change, mostly because it is a religious belief.  But it does scare me that we are losing our rights to be able to birth as we choose.

Throughout this book, future scenarios kept popping into my mind: everyone forced into a c-section because OB/GYNs are too scared to attend, or under-skilled in, vaginal deliveries (much like how breech, twins, or VBACs are now); and having to go "underground" in order to have a vaginal birth, a midwife, or a birth out of the hospital.  This is where maternity care is headed, and this book shows that we're not that far off.  I always wonder what kind of birth my daughters will choose when they have children of their own.  Of course, I would like them to choose a natural birth with a midwife, preferably out of the hospital.  But in 20 years, they may not have the freedom to choose their birth experience.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about modern maternity care - how things became standard procedures and how we arrived where we are today.  It is not, however, a beginner's guide to the natural childbirth "movement" and childbearing rights.  It definitely is an eye-opener to how twisted/perverted/corrupted/brainwashed (take your pick) our maternity care and providers are.