Unnatural Selection

As a Doula and childbirth educator, one of my beliefs is that pregnancy is a natural state of being, and not a medical condition.

I tell women, "Your body already knows how to do this. Your job is to support it with plenty of good food, clean water, and exercise."

I tell women that nature designed their bodies for pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding.

I explain to them that they come from a long line of birthing women; their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, etc all had what it took to grow and birth a baby (or twelve).

In the past, if a woman had diabetes, a heart condition, mental retardation, skeletal deformity, her father had hemophilia, or what-have-you, midwives and doctors understood the risks and advised these women to not have children.
This advice, when followed, had two-fold benefits; it protected the woman from dying during pregnancy / birth, and it prevented a second generation of people with these types of health problems.

Not so, today.
Through modern medicine, practically any woman can have a baby!
With drugs, c-sections, and micro-management, women who previously could not (or who would have been advised to not) have babies are having them.

In addition, women who have had babies with severe genetic defects are rarely discouraged from having more. Medicine will just fix those kids, too!

What that means for me is that a woman with very poorly-controlled diabetes gets pregnant and wants a homebirth.
"But, my body was designed to do this. It will be fine!" she chirps.

If I refuse to attend her birth, and she cannot find a midwife willing to work with her, she may attempt an unassisted birth, without any skilled attendants, possibly with a disastrous outcome.

The woman who lost her mother and an aunt to breast cancer and battled it herself along-side her sister is thrilled to learn the chemo did not make her sterile. She is expecting a little girl in June.

A woman who has three children, all with moderate-to-severe genetic 'challenges' proudly shows off her pregnant belly.

A woman whose first two children are plagued with such severe food allergies to wheat, eggs, dairy, peanuts, and several fruits that they cannot eat any outside food (lest they go into anaphylactic shock), and have to have each meal specially prepared for them, squeals with delight that they finally conceived number three.