TOPIC-5_p-14_Early 1900s ~ peeling the onion, one layer at a time . . .
How the routine use of obstetrical interventions in the births of middle- and upper-class women in the early 1900s radical changed and redefined obstetrically-managed childbirth for the rest of the 20th and continues to dominate obstetrical practices in the 21st century
The disturbing and disheartening “answers” trace back to early 1900s. It was a “one-two punch” delivered by small number of extremely influential obstetricians over the decades from 1910 (the year Flexner Report was published) to the early 1930s. This elite guard of obstetricians was looking for ways to simultaneously eliminate the legal practice of midwifery the US, while also setting the policies and practice of obstetrics on a very specific trajectory — a hospital-based surgical specialty that ‘delivered’ healthy women who were unconscious under general anesthesia.
This “grand plan” directly eliminated decision-making by childbearing women in regard to what was done to them – in other words, they had absolutely no “say” about where and how they labored and gave