Description
Book SynopsisUpbeat and informative, Gaskin asserts that the way in which women become mothers is a women's rights issue, and it is perhaps the act that most powerfully exhibits what it is to be instinctually human. Birth Matters is a spirited manifesta showing us how to trust women, value birth, and reconcile modern life with a process as old as our species. Renowned for her practice's exemplary results and low intervention rates, Ina May Gaskin has gained international notoriety for promoting natural birth. She is a much-beloved leader of a movement that seeks to stop the hyper-medicalization of birth-which has lead to nearly a third of hospital births in America to be cesarean sections-and renew confidence in a woman's natural ability to birth.
Table of Contents1 Foreword; 2 1. The Importance of Birth and Birth Stories; 3 2. Second-Wave Feminism, Birth, and Motherhood; 4 3. Sexuality and Birth; 5 4. A Brief Look at the History of Midwives and Medical Men; 6 5. Technology and Empowerment; 7 6. Gathering the Power of Sisterhood; 8 7. What's a Father-to-Be to Do?; 9 8. My Vision for the Future; 10 9. The Kind of Obstetrics I Miss, and Its Great Defenders
