Why is the share of cesarean deliveries rising?
Nearly one-third of all births in America are now performed by cesarean delivery, according to CNN and a report released yesterday by the National Center for Health Statistics. That represents 1.2 million C-sections in 2004 — 29.1 percent of births last year — and marks a strong spike despite recent government pledges to reduce C-section births by 15 percent by the year 2010. That the rise in C-section births does not reflect a corresponding surge in high-risk pregnancies — according to the Centers for Disease Control, premature-birth rates rose only 7 percent between 1990 and 2001 and the new NCHS study shows that the procedure rose in all births, including healthy, full-term, first-time pregnancies — does suggest that that behind the statistics, significant cultural, rather than clinical, forces are at work. “Women are getting the message that birth is something you need to be afraid of, something very overwhelming and powerful that they won’t be able to handle on their own, and
