132: Bad Science in a Pretty Font - Caesareans, Risk and Birth Misinformation

And today's episode is about unnecessary cesarean sections killing women.

She's shaking her head.

I already said, I said, I'm going to challenge you on, if you start saying the word unnecessary cesarean section.

Yes.

Thank you.

I'm saying it on purpose.

So the premise of this is there's this increasing trend on social media whereby a certain group of people will put out two, on their own, seemingly factually correct statements.

So, for example, the maternal mortality of vaginal birth is lower than maternal mortality when you have a caesarean section.

In certain circumstances, those two individual statements, on their own, are factually correct.

What bothers me is what follows.

There is an unnecessary increase in the rate of C-sections in the world.

Therefore, we are unnecessarily killing women.

It's never necessary to kill women, by the way.

Absolutely not.

We are unnecessarily killing women is kind of a moot point.

Yeah.

So this is my problem is people with certain agendas will ignore nuance, will put two seemingly factual statements together and conflate them and then end up with a simplistic conclusion that increasing C-sections automatically mean women are being harmed for no good reason.

They create an association where there is none and then use that created false association to infer a causation that doesn't exist.

A C-section is an intervention and the value depends on the context.

The risk of an intervention has to be compared to the risk of not intervening in that particular situation.

And also, women deserve nuance, not scary slogans.

Like the reason for a C-section does not have to be due to the mother's health or well-being is at risk or the baby's health or well-being is at risk.

It can be a choice for a woman to make on her own terms for her own reasons.

And that discussion on risk benefit and the weighing of the risks and benefits is hers.

Absolutely.