1) The book is organized into 9 major topics: Introduction, Arranged Birth, The Short Cut, Denied Birth, Consequences, Mothers' Helpers, Underground, Criminalized, and Rights. These topics are led by acknowledgements and followed by two appendices and an index.
4) I am struck by the fact that, during childbirth, doctors see women as incapable of making decisions for themselves. Perhaps doctors and nurses are so used to being in a position of authority over the patients in hospitals (especially those lying in bed with various drugs in their system), that to consider the opinion of such a patient during a crucial time is foolish to them. The idea of an episiotomy makes me shudder, but it angers me to think that a woman would be unwillingly subjected to one just because she is in a bed, in pain, feminine, in a potentially fatal situation, etc. I would like to learn more about the careers and lives of midwives. Block said naturally birthing children in part a very underground, illegal process. It is saddening to think that a woman cannot easily partake in a completely physiologically natural process without a) embracing the unnatural or b) putting herself and others in danger of suffering the consequences of disobedience to governmental authority c) putting she and her baby in some danger by being at home with no trained birthing assistants.
5) Jennifer Block incorporates evidence into her book thoroughly and convincingly. Unless citing an interview or anecdote (which is quoted), the evidence is cited via footnotes. she uses statistical evidence (for example, when supporting the point that other countries rank higher in medical maternal care than the US, she mentions percentages of home births and caesareans that occur in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.) She cites doctors, mothers, midwives, nurses, psychologically traumatized mothers (a result of ineffective or incorrect treatment during the birth), and the Discovery Channel. The evidence was relevant to the overall idea of the chapter or paragraph, but sometimes there was so much information packed into one module of writing that it was distracting form the main idea. Block does not have a structurally typical thesis, so the volume and diversity of evidence appears rather haphazard in the form that it’s in.
2) Jennifer Block goes about writing “Pushed” with one general question in mind: How do the processes surrounding birth in the US US
3) Block begins to answer this question in the first 100 pages of the book. According to her data, interviews and inferences, there are many risky procedures (such as Cesarean-sections, inductions, administration of Pitocin, Cervidil, Cytotec, Oxytocin, and narcotics, overall immobilization, episiotomies, repeat C-sections, and manual water breakage) to which women are subjected “…without their consent, and sometimes despite their express refusal“ (page xxiv). These procedures are controversial; there are pros and cons to both vaginal births and C-sections, natural birth and a birth with drugs, home births and hospitalized birth, mobile and immobile births. Doctors justify the decisions they make by stating the pros of their decision and the cons and risks of the alternative. Block remarks that “These justifications are common, but all are controversial” (page 9). Block, through data and interviews, explores the possibility of a safe birth minus the industrialized, mindless attention of “professionals”.
4) I am struck by the fact that, during childbirth, doctors see women as incapable of making decisions for themselves. Perhaps doctors and nurses are so used to being in a position of authority over the patients in hospitals (especially those lying in bed with various drugs in their system), that to consider the opinion of such a patient during a crucial time is foolish to them. The idea of an episiotomy makes me shudder, but it angers me to think that a woman would be unwillingly subjected to one just because she is in a bed, in pain, feminine, in a potentially fatal situation, etc. I would like to learn more about the careers and lives of midwives. Block said naturally birthing children in part a very underground, illegal process. It is saddening to think that a woman cannot easily partake in a completely physiologically natural process without a) embracing the unnatural or b) putting herself and others in danger of suffering the consequences of disobedience to governmental authority c) putting she and her baby in some danger by being at home with no trained birthing assistants.
5) Jennifer Block incorporates evidence into her book thoroughly and convincingly. Unless citing an interview or anecdote (which is quoted), the evidence is cited via footnotes. she uses statistical evidence (for example, when supporting the point that other countries rank higher in medical maternal care than the US, she mentions percentages of home births and caesareans that occur in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.) She cites doctors, mothers, midwives, nurses, psychologically traumatized mothers (a result of ineffective or incorrect treatment during the birth), and the Discovery Channel. The evidence was relevant to the overall idea of the chapter or paragraph, but sometimes there was so much information packed into one module of writing that it was distracting form the main idea. Block does not have a structurally typical thesis, so the volume and diversity of evidence appears rather haphazard in the form that it’s in.
I personally did not do background research on most of the cited pieces of evidence, but there was one cited fact I found especially unlikely to be true: “Today most fetal monitoring is done externally, but the original models were applied internally. The monitor was a wand-like device with a sharp steel screw at the tip, which was inserted through the cervix and driven into the fetus’s scalp. Corometrics experts claimed EFM would reduce the chance of infant death and mental retardation, but by 1976, questions about its efficacy and safety were surfacing” (page 33). I found evidence that scalp electrodes were used during the early 1970’s (http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/1976/05000/The_Effect_of_Unselected_Intrapartum_Fetal.2.aspx), but not “wand like devices with a sharp steel screw”. This causes me to question the validity of Block’s other citations, and therefore the inferences she makes based on her evidence.
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