Hard labour

More women than ever are having their babies by Caesarian section. Not the old last-resort emergency type, either; the ones where mothers howl for days, to the point of peril for self or child, until mercy descends in a scalpel — life-saving, but adding to existing trauma. No. This marked increase, by as much as 40 per cent in one year at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, has been among women who elect a Caesarian; those who plan, often months in advance, to be delivered calmly, swiftly and relatively free of pain in a modern, controlled, 21st-century environment. In short: an increase in women who are aware that there is a choice and are happy to exercise it. So good news all round then.

Unless, that is, you read the coverage of these findings in pretty much any newspaper last week. From the Guardian to the Daily Mail, the consensus was absolute: this is a bad-news story reported in richly pejorative language. They freely quoted those who ‘blame’ the rising trend and ‘experts’ who ‘warn’ against it (unnamed ‘experts’, mind), they introduced us to the word tocophobia, meaning fear of childbirth (is there a word for fear of any other specific agony, I wonder?), while the Guardian topped the admonishment to cowardly electors of Caesarians when it quoted a doctor who berated ‘women’s reluctance to withstand labour pain’, their ‘lesser tolerance’ and observed sternly that ‘They should realise that childbirth is painful.’

It is impossible to imagine any other field of medical endeavour in which a qualified, practising doctor could get away with, to paraphrase: ‘Of course it hurts. What do you expect me to do about it?’ In fact, the reverse is the case; in every other healthcare respect, medical and technological advance leads to therapies seized upon, fought over and politically haggled as strident hot potatoes.