Is cesarean delivery a media beast?

Listening to NPR/WHYY's Fresh Air program in my car this week, I heard Dave Davies interviewing the author and journalist John Darnton about his new novel 'Black and White and Dead All Over'.

They began by discussing an incident in the novel based on real events, which immediately brought to my mind, contemporary media coverage of cesarean delivery.

Davies: "We've got somebody who has a wonderful story of a priest doing good works in the slums of Boston and you have the executive editor, Skeeta Diamond, shoot the idea down. Why?"
Darnton: "Well, because, Skeeta Diamond says, 'You know, this is not the time for that kind of story. That's a positive priest story. We're in the midst of a scandal here, and to keep a scandal going, you have to feed the beast. You can't just let it die out by printing a story that goes against a scandal.'"

My thoughts on this

Largely because of birth research that included combined cesarean outcomes (emergency and elective), cesarean delivery retained its title of 'most risky' birth type for many, many years. It became if you like, the media's birth beast. As time went on, and newer studies began to separate planned and emergency outcomes, emergency cesarean delivery evolved as the new generation of beast, but this proved a rather weak specimen and was all too soon defeated. In its place, an even greater, bloodcurdling creature than ever imagined before reared its ugly head. Cesarean delivery on maternal request had arrived.

As report after report of risks for the mother and baby flowed from the media's inky pen, many cried, 'Why would anyone choose surgery over the natural alternative?' The beast roared even louder when it came to light that some of the women choosing surgery didn't even have a medical indication - no tokophobia, presumed large baby, perceived small pelvis - no, not a single one of the usual excuses. Accusatory adjectives and newly created labels literally leaped from many an editor's indignant copy: selfish, dangerous, uninformed, celebrity copycat, too posh to push.

Fortunately, some journalists realized they should begin to tame this beast and investigate its origins further. They soon discovered that if the beast was born at 39 weeks EGA to a healthy mother planning a small family, it was not necessarily any more scary that all the other birth types. In fact, they also learned that some women and medical professionals actually found it less scary than the birth beast that had been around forever - vaginal delivery. Up until very recently, this beast had been inescapable by mankind, and while many now believed they had the power to tame and even control it, not every woman was convinced. So they chose instead to cautiously befriend the new beast, with the theory that when it comes to pregnancy and birth, in the end, a beast is a beast is a beast.