Because you are a misogynist who thinks that women aren’t capable of being doctors?

Do we really dare to believe that maybe rape can include things that don’t clearly have to do with a man’s sexual gratification but have more to do with a man treating a woman’s body like a piece of meat?

Whether you like it or not, attaching a name to something gives it meaning.

All trauma sucks. Being kicked in the shin or shot in the head, no difference, its all simply traumatic.

Please, please, please tell me the irony here is not lost on you?

Good point. That’s why so many black couple have asain babies. Race isn’t genetic.

thanks for the article. The more I learn, the more I understand that there are simply some things in life that I may never be capable of understanding.

So a woman deserves to be treated like shit in her labor, a time where you are in such excruciating pain you can hardly think straight much less argue with a doctor?

You might consider it to be simple rudeness. For a woman on a table who has had her personal ladybusiness violated without any forewarning, that may not be simple rudeness. Do you see what I mean?

Tools, what? Not necessarily. And even if it was: in what other circumstance - even medical circumstance - would it be acceptable for a person to walk into a room and touch your genitals without explaining why or what is going to happen.

They are being wrong. Not hateful or cruel. Down’s syndrome is a genetic defect that causes severe mental retardation.

Except, by definition, they are acting unreasonably.

FFS. Yeah, I guess it is hard to make that distinction when you are just making shit up and have no clue what you’re talking about. I can see how that would make things tough.

That said, who are you (or me or anyone) to dictate another’s birth process? As far as I understand it the only two ways to get a c-section are to request it, or to need it, either in emergency trauma c-section form or in situations like my birth. Is it really our right to tell any woman how to give birth? If you…

What the fuck are you blathering on about? We’re talking about doing medical procedures (like an epidural or episiotomy) without the patient’s consent.

Is it our responsibility to avoid making the patriarchy feel uncomfortable, or is it our responsibility to tell the honest, unvarnished truth of our experiences, using the terms that fit the “crime” best from both a legal and a psycho-social viewpoint?

I will not, however, be guilty of murder if I don’t jump in a lake to save someone who is drowning.

If we give women the complete and total power to control what is happening to their bodies, then the doctor shouldn’t face any more legal liability than for a women making a medical decision about her non-pregnant body.

Just as Jennifer Block wrote in “Pushed”, a man can not be compelled to undergo a procedure to donate a kidney to his son, even if that kidney would save his son’s life, if the procedure is against the man’s will. Why is it different for women giving birth?

Isn’t “carrying a baby to term” and “going to the hospital to deliver the baby” clearly “explicitly mak[ing] a decision to put herself at risk for her baby”? Or is that only implicit? Heck, why would an implicit permission be unacceptable?