...this wouldn't happen. Or this. Seems like we are all sat around watching the flow of horror stories from the US health care system - particularly thanks to Michael Moore's film Sicko - but we're letting our own heath care system go the same way. A friend of mine who is a lawyer recently had a baby and spent nearly £10,000 on private health care for the delivery (elective Caesarian because it's her right have her baby her way) because she said she's "seen too many malpractice suits and knows what can go wrong". And even then the food was pretty awful and had to be paid for separately and there were some holes in the care provided. If we believe in a free heath service for everyone, we need to be spending money making sure it does what it says on the tin. And how ironic that you can in some areas get IVF on the NHS. We'll pay to get you pregnant but then we'll leave you in agony to give birth on your own. It's what's called a trick, girls, don't let them catch you.
Friday, October 19, 2007
If Men Got Pregnant...
...this wouldn't happen. Or this. Seems like we are all sat around watching the flow of horror stories from the US health care system - particularly thanks to Michael Moore's film Sicko - but we're letting our own heath care system go the same way. A friend of mine who is a lawyer recently had a baby and spent nearly £10,000 on private health care for the delivery (elective Caesarian because it's her right have her baby her way) because she said she's "seen too many malpractice suits and knows what can go wrong". And even then the food was pretty awful and had to be paid for separately and there were some holes in the care provided. If we believe in a free heath service for everyone, we need to be spending money making sure it does what it says on the tin. And how ironic that you can in some areas get IVF on the NHS. We'll pay to get you pregnant but then we'll leave you in agony to give birth on your own. It's what's called a trick, girls, don't let them catch you.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the 2nd story especially - just read a story on Alternet this morning about how we USonian women are pushed into interventions we don't need and have been feeling guilty about my epidural and the suction that they used after I'd been pushing for six hours. About 12 hours into my 23 hour labor, I had 4 contractions wthat were "on top" of each other (no let-up between them). At that point, my labor nurse told me, "You know, honey, they don't give any medals for doing this without drugs!" and I conceded to the epidural. I feel better now.
Isn't it WEIRD how there are any number of press stories about how women should be pushed to have LESS pain relief, and LESS caesarians and MORE home births and MORE water births or whatever. So there's one group of people deciding what women SHOULD have for their births and another group whose job it is to FORCE those decisions on us.
We've got birthing centres and maternity wards all over the UK shrinking and closing down. Surely we should realise that women are entitled to CHOOSE how to have their own babies. And that means having plenty of facilities available to them.
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