Wagner, Marsden. Born in the USA How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First. Berekely and Los Angeles, California: University of Berkely, 2006. 1-189. Print.
While both "The Business of Being Born" and the book "born in the USA" both preach midwifery and home births they approach it differently. The book gives more hard numbers, with small bits of heavily biased analysis, while the movie gives long talks and examples, followed by small bits and numbers. Not saying that the book doesn't give examples, for almost every data set (survey, who stat, ect.) there is one powerful example. Which is a very good strategy to sell his points. because the shock value of the story has you looking at the numbers saying, "Wow, this happens to 36% of people. This needs to be changed." The movie doesn't use this tactic, or at least not as well. The movie is showing a few smooth deliveries assisted by midwives. I must add that these aren't using totally different techniques to display information and persuade the viewer/reader as the author from born in the USA, Marsden wagner, is in the movie, almost directly quoting his book.
From pages 100-200 there were two different chapters that each had a major insight. "Freedom, family sanctity, the women's choice, and human rights should dictate place of birth." (Wagner, 151) Many people, especially from the medical world are trying to tell people that birth belongs in the hospital. These people for the most part aren't thinking about what the women wants, they are thinking about what is most convenient for them. Which is usual at the hospital, where the doctors feel most comfortable.
The other big insight from the second hundred pages was "Pitting pregnant and birthing women against those doctors and hospitals who abuse their rights is, one hopes, only a temporary buy necessary strategy in giving birth decision-making rights back to women and families." (Wagner, 181) Doctors and other people in the medical world (hospital administrators, insurance providers, ect.) "strongly influence" women during labor and the birthing process. This can range from giving advice that benefits the doctor and not the mother, to giving unwanted procedures. To get to the point, women have less power then they should and that has to change.
-Obstetricians are against out-of-hospital birth, and don't even want to look at the facts about it. (Wagner, 132)
-There are far fewer interventions in out of hospital births. (Wagner, 135)
-There are countries with much higher home-birth and lower natal mortality rates then the United States. (Wagner, 145)
-Obstetricians have much worse track records regarding how women are treated during birth, yet are more used and respected then midwives. (Wagner, 155)
-Patients have a lot of rights that aren't respected by doctors. (Wagner, 174)
Marsden Wagner used the information that the Netherlands has a 36% planned home-birth rate, and a lower natal mortality rate then the United States.
"In Peristat-II from 22 weeks gestation, after France, The Netherlands had the highest fetal mortality rate (7.0 per 1,000 total number of births)." (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19192585)
This is relevant to Marsden Wagner's arguments, because all he is trying to prove is that having a hospital birth isn't the only way to go. That countries outside the U.S. have a lot of successful home births. This proves it because the Netherlands has a .7% perinatal mortality rate. While the U.S. Showed 1.4% in one study.
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