Interesting thought...

I saw this on the comments page of another blog I read:

Instutionalized care is just that beyond the docs you see prenatally you have anonymous nurses , tecs , chief of staff, head nurses,ped staff and hospital administration, not to mention your insurance company who all go in to making decisions about your care - lots of things to think about and include when you end up in a hospital.

It just makes sense if you think about it. You are just ONE person/number when you walk into a hospital. My mother, for example, experienced this just last year when she unexpectedly found herself in the hospital for a week. Sure, the nurses were nice, the doctors breezed in every day for a five minute check in, but she was never a HUMAN WOMAN WITH NEEDS AND FEELINGS. She was a chart, a body that wouldn't cooperate with the medications being pumped into it, and eventually a surgical patient. And she was treated as such.

How, you ask? Well, she was not "allowed" to shower for five days. Not because it would have negatively impacted her health, but because it was a liability risk. She could have slipped or passed out due to her condition. But you know what would have fixed that? A nurse or aide who was willing for five minutes to hold her on the hips or shoulders while she rinsed her body off in the shower.

My Mom has certain dietary allergens that she must avoid to escape the misery of an allergic reaction. Day after day, her lunch would come filled with food products she could not eat. The problem never got fixed.

Seeing her lay there in a bed, attached to monitors, knowing that her health was in danger, I knew in my heart that this was the best place for her to be. She needed 24 hour, around the clock care and monitoring. But at what price?

That brings me to cost and benefits...when are women in our society going to learn that the cost we pay to have our children in the place we **perceive** as the safest place going to realize that the benefits RARELY outweigh the risks? When are women going to realize that every time they walk in the door of a hospital while in labor, to be induced, or to have a surgery that is likely unnecessary, that we are participating in a grand human experiment?

When are women going to figure out that they have been indoctrinated--duped into believing a certain way of having a child is the ONLY way?

Famed cognitive researcher Noam Chomsky once said something brilliant:

"For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments."

And he is right. Women need to open their eyes to the destruction they are willingly signing themselves up for under the premise of freedom of choice.

Just swish it around in your mind a little. I bet, if you really think about it, you will see my point. Even if you think I'm a crazy lunatic who can't see past her own argument. Because I'm not. I see the other side--I lived on the other side. And I lived with the destruction that it caused. And I refuse to stand by and watch the women I love (even women that I don't even know...just woman-kind, in general) and care about do the same thing without even a thought that there could be another way.