I thought about deleting your post because you are attacking a poster to the Forum. I'm going to let it stand, however, because you illustrate the difficulties women face in trying to make informed decisions in the face of medical staff members such as yourself using misinformation and strongarm tactics to shame, terrify, threaten, or otherwise coerce them into going along with what their care provider wants to do to them or their babies. Even if what you are saying had some basis in fact, which it does not, emotionally abusing a patient is a violation of that patient's rights and of medical ethics. Unfortunately, there is no accountability in the system, and so persons such as yourself can continue to act with impunity.
As for the substance of your attack, somehow you have failed to notice that conventional obstetric management is, by any standard, an abysmal failure. The research literature comparing obstetric management with care that supports, facilitates, and promotes the normal process and only intervenes medically when necessary is rock solid on this point. Few women subjected to conventional obstetric management escape exposure to at least one and usually several procedures, drugs, or restrictions that are unsafe and ineffective with routine or frequent use and sometimes with any use at all. As a result, U.S. maternal and infant morbidity rates are indefensibly, shockingly high, far higher than most developed countries and not a few developing ones. Just consider this: the cesarean surgery rate in low-risk first-time mothers was one in four several years ago. It's almost certainly higher now. If you knew a mechanic who recommended major repairs that, while occasionally needed, would permanently weaken the engine--yes, a uterine scar is permanent damage--on one in four cars brought in for routine maintenance, would you take your car to that mechanic? It's a safe bet that a fair percentage of the babies in your neonatal intensive care unit are victims of their mother's obstetrician's injudicious meddling, some of which she may have been persuaded to agree to against her better judgment by people like you. Shamefully, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has not shown the least interest in reining in their members.
We agree on one point, though: I, too, wonder why women knowingly stay with obstetricians (or midwives, for that matter) whose management practices (I cannot bring myself to call it care) jeopardize them and their babies and who treat them badly to boot. I emphasize “knowingly” because most women haven’t the least idea of the real state of obstetrics. But, then, women stay in abusive domestic relationships, so I am sure they have their reasons.
-- Henci