What makes you mad?

The question posted in my churches' Facebook group (yes, we're that hip...we have a Facebook group) was:

Well, here's a place to start. On Sunday, I revealed that I'm pretty
angry about bottled water for environmental reasons and the fact that
there are plenty of places in this world where people literally don't
have water much less clean water... I wonder what Angry Jesus would
have to say.

What makes you angry? Seriously, what makes you angry enough to take action and affect change?

I liked my answer so much I have pasted it here to share with you all,
if you are interested. I'd love to hear what makes you angry!

You probably don't want to read all of this but you've opened a can of
worms with me...or rather one of those "can of nuts" with a snake that
jumps out at you;)

I am angry that ACOG and the media have women so afraid of pregnancy
and birth that they flock to surgeons for routine care instead of
midwives who have better statistics. How is it that we are supposedly
SO medically advanced and yet of all industrial nations we have the
highest c-section rate and perinatal death rates for both women and
babies. There are two possible answers to this. Either 1) low-risk
pregnancy and birth should never be over-seen by surgeons looking for
something to go wrong, inducing for non medical reasons and
administering drugs at the first sign of labor or 2) somehow, US women
have evolved so much that ONE THIRD of them are suddenly unable to have
healthy vaginal births. Hospitals and doctors are for sick people and
only 7-10% of women actually have something wrong with them or their
baby that requires obstetric care. But every day, ACOG and OBs lie to
women telling them that home birth is not a safe option, that birth
centers aren't as good as hospitals, that VBACs are riskier than
scheduled surgery, that slowed labor is reason for surgery when the
baby shows no signs of distress.

How can our country look at our birth statistics in relation to other
industrialized nations and think that our way is the best? How can
media make show after show like "A Baby Story" with emergency after
emergency and think they are doing anything but scaring women out of
the natural process of birth?

How can a nation that is largely religious believe that God has made
them some-how faulty in reproducing to the point that offspring must be
cut out of them more than 33% of the time?

How can 85% of women spend more time researching their next car
purchase than they do their birth options? Most of us would never walk
in to a single dealership, take the first car dealer who walked up to
me and let him tell me what car to buy with which options, but that's
exactly what women let their God-like doctors do.

People blame insurance for it. "Doctors are quick to cut because of a
fear of litigation and malpractice insurance goes up because of it."
That's because there is a huge difference between a woman who has a
midwife in a birthing center or at home and a woman who uses a doctor.
The difference is that a woman who believes her doctor is all-knowing
because s/he went to medical school can do no wrong and is solely at
fault when something goes wrong, whereas a woman who uses a midwife
knows that sometimes things happen in birth that can't be prevented.
When compared to doctors with low-risk patients, Midwives have lower
c-section rates and lower death rates and are rarely sued when
something goes wrong. Their rates are much more comparable to those of
other industrialized nations.

How can that not make women furious? Women and babies are dying for no
reason and ACOG puts out a statement that home birth shouldn't be legal
because it's unsafe. If you want to look purely at statistics, it's
hospitals that shouldn't be allowed to deliver low-risk births. But
then OBs and ACOG don't get any money.

Truly natural birth rarely ends badly. Natural birth is a birth
unhindered by IVs, artificial induction, or pain medication. A birth
that isn't "managed" but watched over. A birth that is left to the
woman's body because that woman comes from a long, unbroken line of
childbearing women. Birth didn't become safer when it entered the
hospital, in fact, more women died because of hospital birth for many
years until germs were discovered.

Here's my favorite quote:

"There's a secret in our culture and it's not that birth is painful, it's that women are strong." -Laura Stavoe Harm

What women don't know is that OBs spend little time learning about
delivering babies in medical school and not one minute, not one written
page is spent on natural birth and its effectiveness. All the while,
midwives spend almost all their time learning how to safely deliver a
baby. How can that possibly have anything but a better outcome?

So, I have decided to go through doula training this summer in hopes
that I can help women learn about natural birth and help them through
it, even if they chose to do it in the hospital.

Oh, and routine infant circumcision...but that's an even longer post.

Like I said...you probably didn't want to read it all. But I feel better getting it out...thanks for asking:)