The VBAC Facts® Mission:
Our mission is to share accurate VBAC information.
Within those four simple words is a larger story.
There is a huge gap between what national guidelines and medical evidence advise and the reality of our healthcare system.
Women and birthing people deserve better and that's why we are here.
The VBAC Facts® Values
What we believe about the work we do
We champion autonomy.
Women and birthing people have the right to make their own medical decisions. Paternalism has no place in health care. Women and birthing people know what they want and that should be honored. We encourage women and gender expansive people to take ownership of their bodies and truly view themselves and their values as worthy. For some, this might be the first time in their life that they found their voice.
We champion courage.
For those planning VBACs and repeat cesareans, being comfortable taking the next step, without any promises on how it will play out, requires courage. For professionals who want to support VBAC in this climate, it requires bravery. Tenacity to do the right thing even when others around you choose not to. Fortitude to stand in the truth that everyone is entitled to respectful health care. Commitment to ensure that everyone receives the highest quality care under your watch.
We champion honesty.
Women and birthing people are entitled to the truth, not happy go lucky platitudes or fear mongering statistics. They deserve to have the medical research and their rights communicated to them in a way that is true and clear, not pandering or patronizing. Additionally, we know that someone can make all the "right" decisions and still need a repeat cesarean or experience a complication. We believe it is important to be honest with parents: luck plays a role in birth.
We champion facts.
While the parents we support want to avoid another cesarean, many who needed and ultimately chose a repeat cesarean report that learning the facts gave them peace.
They understood the risks, made informed decisions, and knew they did everything they could to maximize their VBAC odds. As a result, they had realistic expectations and, in some cases, their repeat cesarean is described as healing.
This is the power of information coupled with agency. This is what everyone deserves.
We champion public health.
This is not just a discussion of "birth preferences" but rather, health care.
The emotional and physical harm that occurs when people are denied autonomy through inadequate informed consent, or hospitals that mandate repeat cesareans, is real.
The serious complications that grow with each prior cesarean is real. We talk frankly of these truths because it matters.
We champion respect and humanity.
There is no one right way to birth. We reject judgements slapped on women and birthing people based on how their babies were born. We also categorically reject platitudes like, "It doesn't matter how your baby was born" or dismissive statements like, "Nobody gets a medal." Both completely disregard the complex emotional journey that accompanies childbirth regardless of mode of delivery.
Let's be clear: Parents make medical decisions based on a variety of medical and non-medical factors. It infantilizes women and birthing people to imply that they plan VBACs for an award or a cesarean as the “easy way out.” Tropes like these mask long-standing attitudes that women are selfish, weak, or incapable of making their own best decisions.
We show respect in the language we use. We refer to “women” and “birthing people” because both are in our audience and everyone is entitle to accurate information and respectful health care.
Further, we talk about “people who labored after a cesarean” and we do not use language like “failed” or “succeeded” at birth. Life is filled with decisions to be made without any guarantees on the outcome. How about marriage? Friendship? Starting a new job? Getting another degree? Pursuing any dream?
We constantly put one foot in front of the other, towards various goals without certainty or promises. There is so much learning and growth that happens in that process. The value of our cumulative choices doesn’t disappear because the closing scene changed. As a result, we do not dismiss the journey of people who have a repeat cesarean with language like "failed VBAC."
We need more humanity in health care and the language we use matters.
We champion equity.
Not only do people experience the world from different perspectives, but the world - including the health care system - responds to individuals based on race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geography, sexual orientation, gender identity and more. That’s how disparities begin.
We cannot work towards improving public health if we ignore the damage caused by bias, and the role of racism in particular. Implicit bias impacts health care outcomes and calling it out is truth telling.
The power in diversity lies in the richness of shared experience. In addition to building trust, and reducing bias, statistics show that health outcomes improve for BIPOC community members with culturally congruent care providers.
We champion diversity to build equity as the first step toward great health care.
We champion personal responsibility.
It is not possible to eliminate risk in childbirth. Yet, providers and hospitals routinely mandate, control, and limit health care choices to manage risk. In doing so, they inadvertently make themselves responsible for outcomes that result from those choices, including the adverse ones. This creates a liability pressure that only further skews the ability of our system to support birthing people’s autonomy.
In fact, we believe the rights and responsibility for the outcome rightly belong to the person giving birth. This shift in perspective, where the provider is not put in the impossible position of controlling outcomes but rather respects and supports patient autonomy, creates the space to see that in the absence of negligence, there is no one “at fault” when things go wrong. It is simply the nature of birth. In reality, adverse outcomes sometimes occur even in the best of circumstances when everyone has done everything “right.”
Shifting our beliefs about power, responsibility, and, thus, liability, allows our healthcare system to embody the medical ethics that have theoretically been the basis of pregnancy care for decades.
We believe that what happens to the bodies of women and birthing people matter.
We believe that paternalism and coercion has no place in medical care.
We believe that every cesarean should be wanted or needed, but never forced.
We believe in reproductive justice and that includes birth.
How can we support you?
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Sometimes it feels like every single life choice women make is up for discussion and debate by the public at large. We seek to extinguish this phenomenon especially in health care, and even more specifically in choices around childbirth.
This is a judgment free zone. Not everyone wants a VBAC and there are times when a cesarean is medically necessary. Our mission is about access not directives.
Fundamentally, we want parents to know that VBAC is recognized by experts as a reasonable option, to have access to accurate and unbiased information, and to be able to plan a VBAC in their community.
We focus on VBAC because while there are no barriers to planning a repeat cesarean, planning a VBAC is often discouraged, with the risks exaggerated to parents and even policies that actively forbid it. We work to address that problem through our courses for parents, membership for professionals, policy work, and consulting.
How can we support you?