Abbey Normal
Senior Member
I think the section bolded by me says it all. If women want to have VBAC's when docs feel it's risky, perhaps they should sign away all rights to sue if something goes wrong. Then the courts should dismiss any case where they try to get around the forfeiture of rights they signed.
Battle lines drawn over C-sections By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY
Wed Aug 24, 7:01 AM ET
For some women, birth has become the latest battleground for reproductive rights.
At a growing number of hospitals, women are being forced to schedule a repeat cesarean section just because they already had one. Doctors and hospitals say they fear lawsuits if they allow a patient to attempt a vaginal birth after a C-section - called a VBAC - and something goes awry.
"We think the risk is more of a legal risk than a medical risk," acknowledges Bob Wentz, CEO of California's Oroville Hospital, which banned VBACs two years ago.
...Though VBACs practically were unheard of before the 1980s, the overall C-section rate was so low that relatively few women cared. But today, some pregnant women regard VBAC bans as an intolerable attack on personal autonomy. They view VBACs' risks - mainly, the chance that the uterine scar from their previous C-section will tear - as a reasonable trade-off for the chance to experience a vaginal birth and avoid abdominal surgery, which carries its own risks.
...The contractions of normal labor can cause a C-section scar to rupture. At worst, uterine ruptures lead to blood transfusions or a hysterectomy and possibly fatal brain damage in the baby. But such catastrophes are uncommon.
In the most definitive study, published in December in The New England Journal of Medicine, about 75% of 18,000 women who attempted a VBAC were successful. The National Institutes of Health study found that ruptures occurred in fewer than 1% - or 124 - of those who tried to have a VBAC.
In most cases, mother and baby did fine. Of the babies born to the VBAC group, there were 12 cases of brain damage that appeared to have resulted from a lack of oxygen caused by maternal complications, such as a rupture. Seven of the 12, two of them fatal to the babies, were linked to uterine rupture.
The VBAC rupture complication rate may seem quite low, says Hankins, chief of obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, but "it's damn high if you're the one."
...In Oklahoma, women who want a hospital VBAC must go to academic medical centers in Oklahoma City or Tulsa, says Carl Hook, CEO of the state's Physicians Liability and Insurance Co. One reason: On Jan. 1, the company stopped covering claims arising from VBACs because of large awards in suits related to such births, Hook says.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050824/ts_usatoday/battlelinesdrawnovercsections
Battle lines drawn over C-sections By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY
Wed Aug 24, 7:01 AM ET
For some women, birth has become the latest battleground for reproductive rights.
At a growing number of hospitals, women are being forced to schedule a repeat cesarean section just because they already had one. Doctors and hospitals say they fear lawsuits if they allow a patient to attempt a vaginal birth after a C-section - called a VBAC - and something goes awry.
"We think the risk is more of a legal risk than a medical risk," acknowledges Bob Wentz, CEO of California's Oroville Hospital, which banned VBACs two years ago.
...Though VBACs practically were unheard of before the 1980s, the overall C-section rate was so low that relatively few women cared. But today, some pregnant women regard VBAC bans as an intolerable attack on personal autonomy. They view VBACs' risks - mainly, the chance that the uterine scar from their previous C-section will tear - as a reasonable trade-off for the chance to experience a vaginal birth and avoid abdominal surgery, which carries its own risks.
...The contractions of normal labor can cause a C-section scar to rupture. At worst, uterine ruptures lead to blood transfusions or a hysterectomy and possibly fatal brain damage in the baby. But such catastrophes are uncommon.
In the most definitive study, published in December in The New England Journal of Medicine, about 75% of 18,000 women who attempted a VBAC were successful. The National Institutes of Health study found that ruptures occurred in fewer than 1% - or 124 - of those who tried to have a VBAC.
In most cases, mother and baby did fine. Of the babies born to the VBAC group, there were 12 cases of brain damage that appeared to have resulted from a lack of oxygen caused by maternal complications, such as a rupture. Seven of the 12, two of them fatal to the babies, were linked to uterine rupture.
The VBAC rupture complication rate may seem quite low, says Hankins, chief of obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, but "it's damn high if you're the one."
...In Oklahoma, women who want a hospital VBAC must go to academic medical centers in Oklahoma City or Tulsa, says Carl Hook, CEO of the state's Physicians Liability and Insurance Co. One reason: On Jan. 1, the company stopped covering claims arising from VBACs because of large awards in suits related to such births, Hook says.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050824/ts_usatoday/battlelinesdrawnovercsections
