02 May 2007

letter in The Age

Yay! My comment about caesareans for overweight women was published in The Age :
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/05/01/1177788138415.html
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1 comment:

sMAzzie sMAzz said...

The link in this post no longer takes us to your letter, so I googled and found you letter as it previously appeared on The Age's website:

"Sizing up the caesarean facts
ONE issue that has been omitted from the dialogue on elective caesareans is that overweight or obese women are much more likely to have a caesarean than most other women.

Statistics vary, but recent studies suggest that between a third and half of obese women have a caesarean birth. For instance, in Britain the rate of emergency caesareans was up to 23.2 per cent last year, which closely follows an increase in the number of women considered to be obese — now about 25 per cent of all women. While the overall caesarean rate has increased over time, the rate in women of size has increased much more than for women of "average" size. This suggests that attitudes and medical management protocols have changed the caesarean rate in women of size far more than obesity itself.

It is not women who are "too posh to push" that are necessarily increasing the caesarean rate. As a result of the medical assumption that extra fat restricts a baby's safe passage in a vaginal delivery, overweight women are increasingly subject to "emergency" caesareans and other unwanted medical intervention.

This should come as no surprise considering how culturally "invisible" overweight women are in Australia; no one talks about the discrimination overweight women face when they do become pregnant.

Meredith Nash, Brunswick East"

I found it at:
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/05/01/1177788138415.html

'Tis a great letter.

6:09 PM

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