One of my all time favorite birth essays…
Rape of the Twentieth Century
Leilah McCracken. Written in March of 1998; revised April 2000.
“A few days later, at home, this thought went through my head- a swirling black flicker of sentience that translated into the following sentence- hospital birth is the rape of the twentieth century.
Women are systematically, routinely, and willingly assaulted every day by individuals and institutions who claim to have their best interests at heart, and most women have no concept of what is lost. Yes, it is rape: just as a man forcing sexual intercourse on a woman strips her of her powers, and wounds her in sacred places, so does birth rape. Women are left shaking, enraged and filled with sorrow after both rapes, because the rape is the same. And just as it would matter if our children were conceived through rape, it matters if they are born through rape. And in both rapes we bleed.
~~~~
Women are made to bleed, often uncontrollably, in hospital births. They bleed because of the standard shot of oxytocin in the leg after birth: a woman’s natural oxytocin-making mechanisms (which contract the uterus to its previous size) shut down when a huge dose of the synthetic hormone is in her bloodstream.
And when the artificial stuff wears off, a woman will suddenly feel faint and collapse in a pool of her own blood. (The uterus has stopped contracting, and the placental site is nearly as large and raw as it was after birth. Artificial hormones used to induce labor cause excessive bleeding, too.) Hemorrhage also happens when “fundus fiddling” is involved: impatient birth attendants will externally manipulate a woman’s uterus to expel the placenta, and will even tug on the cord. This is agonizing, as well as bloody.
A bigger cause of bleeding is episiotomy. Most blood loss in a typical birth will actually come from an episiotomy wound; so much so that a woman can even become anemic. Episiotomy is a foul, malevolent invention- created out of the incredible logic of trying to prevent a perineal injury by inflicting one.
When vaginas are cut open, women suffer: episiotomies can rip through a woman’s perineal tissues, causing extensive tearing; they hurt intensely- doctors will often not even wait for the local anesthetic to kick in before cutting (or even bother administering one); women will cry when they pee for a month. Scar tissue can make sex painful or difficult, often for a woman’s lifetime; and sexual sensation can be diminished because episiotomy permanently severs the nerves that flow far into the perineum from the clitoris.
The wound often becomes painfully infected- in which case the sutures need to be removed to drain the wound, and the perineum needs to be painfully restitched. Deathly gangrenous infections- necrotizing fasciitis and clostridial myonecrosis- are caused by episiotomy. Cancer, endometriosis, and brain abscesses are known to be seeded from the episiotomy site, too.”
Join Birth Love – it will change your life…

Jenny Hatch