Pushing Back: Protecting Maternal Autonomy from the Living Room to the Delivery Room

As mothers are given more freedom to make their delivery choices, problems with the current maternity care system and the legal protections afforded fetus have the potential to diminish maternal independence. At one end of the spectrum, the home birth movement and reactions against medicalized birth have the potential to create physician distrust and a greater resistance to medical treatment. This resistance, when coupled with an expansive view of fetal rights may result in compelled medical treatment, injury, or the loss of parental rights. At the other end of the spectrum, elective C-sections and inductions will diminish the likelihood that mothers who wish to avoid medical intervention will be able to do so. Somewhere in between, the fears surrounding birth are precluding mothers from exercising viable options from the living room to the delivery room. A three-part solution has been proposed to alleviate these problems. Taken together, these three prongs will empower women to make better-informed birth decisions, hold physicians and midwives more accountable, and create a more cooperative relationship between physician and patient

Pushing Back: Protecting Maternal Autonomy from the Living Room to the Delivery Room

As mothers are given more freedom to make their delivery choices, problems with the current maternity care system and the legal protections afforded fetus have the potential to diminish maternal independence. At one end of the spectrum, the home birth movement and reactions against medicalized birth have the potential to create physician distrust and a greater resistance to medical treatment. This resistance, when coupled with an expansive view of fetal rights may result in compelled medical treatment, injury, or the loss of parental rights. At the other end of the spectrum, elective C-sections and inductions will diminish the likelihood that mothers who wish to avoid medical intervention will be able to do so. Somewhere in between, the fears surrounding birth are precluding mothers from exercising viable options from the living room to the delivery room. A three-part solution has been proposed to alleviate these problems. Taken together, these three prongs will empower women to make better-informed birth decisions, hold physicians and midwives more accountable, and create a more cooperative relationship between physician and patient