Birth Choice is a Feminist Issue

Finally some discussions are happening about birth and feminism. I feel like feminists have covered so much over the years, and I benefit from the hard work of amazing women on a daily basis...but where is birth in all of this? Our rights as birthing women have gotten worse and worse and there has been very little discussion about birth as the other choice among feminists.

Now birth is my work, so of course it is the topic I eat, breath and dream about. I understand that we all have our focus and very little room in our already packed brains to branch out most of the time, but birth should be important to everyone. After all, it is the one thing that we all experience. It sets us up for failure or success for the rest of our lives. Birth makes the world go round, literally. No matter what your spiritual beliefs, the planet was born and we along with it.

Birth is the quintessential cause of our time. We have finally figured out the process of birth, for the most part. Contrary to what we believed for centuries, we now know that babies feel pain, so the world seems to be a little more empathatic to the baby's needs and feelings, and now we have effective ways of dealing with the very real, but not as common occurance of *true* childbirth emergencies. So why in the world are we still ignoring the physiologic and emotional needs of women during childbirth?