7 Painful Truths About Childbirth In America
Why the U.S. has become ‘the most dangerous place in the developed world to have baby’
Childbirth in America is nasty, brutish, and long.
In recent decades, a high-tech onslaught has made labor and delivery rooms look like a set for Star Trek. Some gains have resulted — most notably, preterm survival rates are increasing.
But new and expectant mothers still have a higher death rate in the United States than in most developed countries. They are about three times as likely die giving birth as a woman in Britain and Canada.
American women also have longer — and often more painful — deliveries than their mothers did, owing to the soaring use of drugs that speed up labor by causing more rapid and forceful uterine contractions. They seldom get the full picture of their risks from books intended to be “reassuring,” such as What to Expect When You’re Expecting and its spin-offs.
The only industrialized country where maternal mortality is rising
You might imagine all the high-tech devices and labor-boosting drugs had made childbirth safer and easier for women, but you’d be wrong.
