Should Your Doctor Have Performed a C-Section?
Modern medicine has given doctors the gift and the curse of having to decide on a method of delivery in childbirth. Today, cesarean section births are carefully orchestrated procedures where a physician delivers a baby surgically via incisions in a mother’s abdomen and uterus. But for most of human history, the decision to opt for a c-section over a vaginal birth was a necessary last-ditch effort to prevent the death of a mother in labor. Before antiseptics, antibiotics, anesthesia, and midwifery became common in American hospitals, the risks of complications from c-section surgery far outweighed the benefits in all but the most urgent cases.