Shoved to Them
Nearly 10 years ago I had a C-Section. #2 was born 10 weeks premature and weighed in at 3 lbs 1 oz. He was shockingly small and had to fight incredibly hard just live. I am grateful for the surgery that brought him into the world and helped to keep him alive. That doesn’t mean I want another one just because I’ve already had one. I prefer to have my babies the old-fashioned way, thank you very much.
Most women don’t get that option. They don’t live close enough to a hospital which will allow them a vaginal delivery after a c-section. The doctors are willing, the patients would prefer it, but some bureaucrat over at some malpractice insurance company decided that doctors and patients should have no say about their own care.
Funny. I thought that was the mantra of the neo-feminist movement. I thought that reproductive choice was what NOW was all about. Silly me. I sent them emails and called them when I was pregnant with #5 and was told that a c-section had become mandatory for me. My OB cried when he told me that he had no choice. No matter how he personally felt about the whole thing, he would have to cut me.
I decided to play on the Liberal team. It was possible that a conservative mom of 5 and a radical feminist could work together, wasn’t it? Surely this, the choice of method of delivering a baby was right up there as far as women’s issues go. What could be more uniquely female than giving birth?
Silly, stupid, misguided me. I called the local and national offices of the National Organization of Women and Citizen’s for Choice. I’m a woman and I’m talking about a “woman’s right to choose” here. Not the usual “choice” they champion, but an important one.
The right to choose a vaginal birth is not a women’s issue. I know because they’ve told me so. Repeatedly. The ACLU agrees with them, so don’t bother going to them for help. Women have no choice but to be gutted like a fish unless they can find a hospital and a healthcare professional allowed who the insurance companies will allow to deliver a baby the vaginally.
How is this not a “choice” issue? The woman I spoke to at NOW told me that I had gotten pregnant knowing that a “forced c-section” was a probability and now I had to live with the consequences of that decision. I’m not sure what it was that made her so unsympathetic, that I was having my 5th child or that I didn’t want to kill it. It doesn’t matter. I’ve learned the truth about feminism. Pregnancy isn’t a feminist problem unless you want the little bugger to die, if you want him to live then you’re on your own.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In