Reflection/Reaction

Sexual health as a general topic really piques my interest for many reasons. I'm a women's studies minor, so women's health and sexuality and reproductive topics all interest me in this broad genre of discussion. My group has also chosen college pregnancy/sexual health as our topic, so that lecture catered particularly to our research. I had to present on pregnancy for another class, and I found several figures and testimonies that really have me concerned about our nation and how it handles sexual health and reproductive health. I've learned that maternal deaths (when the mother dies in childbirth) have decreased worldwide EXCEPT in the US, and, in fact, our domestic maternal deaths have slightly increased. In the interest of saving time, doctors schedule and perform unnecessary Cesarian sections and episiotomies (both painful procedures that can harm the baby and the mother if not absolutely necessary). There are more C-sections on Fridays because doctors don't want to have to come in on the weekends to deliver babies, so they opt for the unnatural births on their own time. The whole topic really got me thinking about how American medicine is a big business, and we as citizens often forget that. Now, I can't say with certainty what needs to change, but the fact that countries with less medical assistance available have less maternal deaths is a shocking, unacceptable fact.