Stop Blaming Mothers for Unnecessary Cesareans

It's not our fault.

(Obviously. We're not the ones holding the scalpel.)

And, contrary to popular belief, maternal requests for cesarean sections are responsible for less than two percent of cesareans.

What explains the too-high cesarean rate?

A gap between the beliefs held by certain maternity care practitioners (primarily younger obstetricians and family physicians who provide prenatal care but who don't actually attend births, according to the two recent studies by Michael C. Klein and colleagues) and and what research has actually proven to be true about the risks associated with vaginal birth vs cesareans, explains this latest Mythbuster from the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation.