The Obstetric-Industrial Complex

IF YOU GO to a hospital in the United States to deliver your child, you will probably do so flat on your back -- thought by many to be the worst possible position in which to give birth short of being hung by the feet. You have a one-in-three chance of having major abdominal surgery. If you don't, you've got another one-in-three chance of having your vagina slashed with a knife. And you will have a better chance of dying, or having your baby die, than do women in almost any other industrialized country.

Chicago Reader review of Jennifer Block's Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care