The Business of Being Born

So, I've posted about health issues in the past. I think that it's a real shame that so many of us aren't given the opportunity to choose to be healthy. Their are so many people in the United States that can increase their profits by taking that choice away from us. There is a very distinct image of the world one hundred, two hundred, and five hundred years ago to which we have been exposed. Disease and misery, pain and death - if you stop and think about the way we've been taught life in relation to disease was in the past, it's hard to believe that humankind even survived.
"Thank God for the discovery of penicillin," some people say.
The reality of the world is that people one hundred years ago and five hundred years ago lived, most of them quite healthy, the exact same way that people one thousand years ago and ten thousand years ago did. That is to say that there is nothing inherently diseased about the human condition. We would not have survived for as long as we have if that were true, but a lot of pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and lobbyist groups for physicians wouldn't tell you that - well, maybe they would as individuals, but the official position of their organizations stand in contrast to that.
What's prompted this fresh train of thought is that I just watched a pretty great movie. It's called, as you may have deduced from the title of this blog entry, "The Business of Being Born." In it, the history of childbirth in the 20th century is explained, and the United States is contrasted against other countries of similar economic and cultural structures. For example, we have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world. More babies per year survive in Slovenia or that "evil," "third-world" nation of Cuba than in the United States. That's a sad outcome considering the U.S. spends twice as much as any other country in the world on childbirth.



The producer of the film wanted very much to empower women by helping them understand that they have choices when it comes to giving birth. An empowered mother frightens some doctors and some men. The doctor might be afraid because he's got vacation plans in the Caribbean this spring, and let me tell you those Mojitos aren't free! Men might be afraid because they don't understand where they fit into a world with empowered women.
If one were so inclined to look at the world purely from an androcentric (male-centered) point of view, I want a happy, healthy, empowered woman as a partner because I want a happy, healthy, empowered home and happy, healthy, empowered children. How can my future partner help me create those things if she is a shrinking violet? I don't want to have to do it all myself. That's too much for one person to carry.

We've got a long path ahead of us. It's taken a century of pain and struggle to implement the unhealthy system that today we accept as normal. It's going to take just as much to get our health back.