Should we blame women or doctors?

I’m sharing with permission this post from the ICAN list that says there is plenty of blame to go around… (medpros = medical professionals)

I don’t think women exactly go out looking to hand the responsibility to some one else. I think both women and doctors are to blame. Women think (because no one tells them otherwise) that pregnancy has to be managed, that they can’t do it on their own, and so they go on doing what they think they
are supposed to do, and right there waiting are the medpros waiting to offer their “help”. Almost all women that walk into and Ob’s office think they are doing the responsible thing. They think they ARE taking responsibility and are getting the “care” they have been taught to get. The medpros gladly take
the responsibility from women more than I feel that women are looking to hand it over.

It’s hard *because* women are not informed and they *don’t know* they are missing information. They think they ARE informed. Once a person starts down that path it’s hard to become truly informed because the new information contradicts what they have always known AND it makes them feel like a fool for not knowing before. I know we try to education women who just seem like they don’t want to be educated, but it’s more than that. They have their past decisions to protect. It’s not easy to realize you made mistakes. It’s even harder when you made mistakes built on trust.

If women are failing we are failing each other more than we are failing our individual selves. There is a reason there is such an emphasis on avoiding that first cut. Women need to know BEFORE it’s too late, but those in “the know” are not the majority and are certainly not the major influence on most
women today. Once you have been cut your further education is forever limited by your experience and a women feels a need to rationalize, justify, and remain in line with her former choices. (Some of us get past it, many of us here, but we are a minority.) No one likes to hear that there is a better way when they whole heartedly believed in the way they first chose. It’d be like finding out you have been buying premium gas at a higher price only to find out the cheaper gas is actually better for your car. It would feel awful and your instinct would be to find a way that the premium gas IS better so that you don’t feel as though you have wasted all that money for nothing. However if when you get your first car some one tells you the truth about what gas is best then you are just going to buy the right gas and never make that mistake. And further more while you are buying that premium gas and paying the higher price you might even brag to your friends about how you can afford the better gas and how much better your car is running, while there might be those around you thinking “you idiot, that gas isn’t any better”, but NO one told you and if you are told now, it’s too late, you’re invested. You might come around, but not everyone would. Some people have to hold on to the bad decision they made being right because if they admit they were wrong it would be devastating to them. Some people can not handle that kind of truth or education. They have to remain blind for their own sanity.

I know I learned nothing about pregnancy and birth from my mom. I know I didn’t learn it from women I was friends with that were older than me and had walked that path. I know I didn’t learn anything from my grandma or my mother-in-law, or my sister-in-laws. What I learned was from movies and tv where you go to an OB and they “help” you. Is it my fault that no one taught me what I didn’t know I needed to know?

Sarah Taylor, New York