ABSTRACT
For almost two weeks, Kim had been teaching her health communication course to students from her university who were participating in a study-abroad course in England. A small class of seven women, this class had been a particularly exciting opportunity for her because she could concentrate on the women’s health issues that had been the predominant focus of her scholarship for the past 7 years. With great zeal, she discussed one of her favorite topics-pregnancy and childbirth. As a staunch advocate of the midwifery2 model of maternity care, she regaled her students with stories decrying the benefits of and need for medical interventions. Doctors, invested in an objective, scientific approach to health care, tend to spend little if any time with the expectant and/or delivering mother; they often do not attend to the woman’s concerns or feelings. Moreover, the medical paradigm, one which pathologizes and medicalizes this very normal experience, typically necessitates technological interventions such as fetal monitoring, epidurals, labor inducement, episiotomies (if you’re lucky enough to make it to a natural, vaginal birth), and Cesarean sections, known by medical professionals to be detrimental to mother and child. It’s all so impersonal.
