More on birth interventions

I started to write a comment but it got ridiculously long. Plus I wanted to clarify a few things for everyone, not just the comment readers. :)

Here goes:

Jessica, I believe that the study was comparing low-risk stats out of hospital to low-risk stats in hospital. I.e. they excluded the high risk hospital births so that they'd be comparing apples to apples. I absolutely believe that high risk births should be in the hospital.

For that matter, (rebecca) any woman should have a right to a hospital birth (as pain free as possible!) if she so chooses. My concern is not with hospitals, per se, but with the routine use of unnecessary (and often inherently risky) tools such as cytotec, augmentative pitocin, episiotomies, etc.)

Regarding lawsuits: I wonder how long it will take for the suits to start going the other way. For example, there was a case back on the east coast recently where a woman sued for an unnecessary c-section that ended badly, and won. Given that there are a lot of risks associated with c-sections, (not to mention cytotec inductions, episiotomies, etc.) that simply aren't talked about these days, I wonder if there will eventually be a backlash and return to a more laid back approach to childbirth?