Health Alert: Are Women Being Forced To Have C-Sections?

Study finds mothers in low-risk pregnancies have varying rate of procedure

For expectant mothers out there, here’s something to be aware of: Caesarean deliveries at hospitals around the country are being performed in cases where researches suspect doctors are pushing them for liability reasons. A C-section, of course, is typically used to safely delivery babies in high-risk pregnancies and when the mother’s health is at risk. But that’s not what you’ll find at many hospitals around the country, according to a study published on Monday in the journal of Health Affairs. The rate of C-section deliveries varies drastically among hospitals, ranging from 7 percent of all births to 70 percent at the hospital with the highest rate. The study does not name the hospitals because they were not in the data provided to researchers. The findings were based on more than 800,000 deliveries at 593 hospitals in 2009. Although healthy mothers can request to have a baby delivered by C-section, the rate has increased significantly in recent years to 33 percent of all births in 2011, up from 21 percent in 1996, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (New York Times)

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