Because Western medicine is often dismissive of these concerns, many people who become pregnant seek out alternative sources of information and alternative supports—places where they are told that the medical profession is built to make them feel helpless, dependent, and weak. That they are capable of finding their intuitive power, innate strength, and maybe even, according to a 2008 documentary featuring Christiane Northrup, have a “birth-gasm.” Much of this can be positive and healthy: it’s a wonderful thing to have choices in what birth can be. But this is where the white, wealthy, libertarian streak in the wellness industry can become lethal. Because while it is true that many doctors give up on vaginal births too soon, or rely too much on surgical interventions, or express alarm over low-risk home births, it is also true that complications from pregnancy and childbirth remain major causes of death around the world. Even in a country as wealthy as the United States, a great many women and gender-marginalized people need more (and more sensitive) health care, not less.

QUESTION: The contrast between wellness-industry anti-medical messaging and the reality of maternal mortality warrants deeper exploration, especially the US maternal death rates.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 585