[chrisseaton]

> this is like all nurses going on strike - what do you do if you need to gove birth?

You see a midwife to give birth, not a nurse. I believe they’re also striking, but they’re not nurses and it’s an entirely different strike.

[Balgair]

Small point: Here in the US, midwife services can be great for uncomplicated and (mostly) unmedicated births. However, if you have any complications, you likely need to see an MD really really fast.

[chrisseaton]

Yeah most UK maternity wards are run by midwives, but there's an obstetrician on call (on site.)

[Balgair]

Thanks for the info! It's always fun to learn about the various medical differences between peoples.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Not really. My sister trained as a midwife and there are extremely few cases where an MD could have possibly done a better job than people who spent their entire careers studying pregnancy and birth.

She spent a lot of that time working with poor Amish communities, not the well-off people you probably imagine hire midwives in the US.

[hedora]

I don't see how this is possible. Hospitals can have multiple MD's on site in seconds, perform emergency C-sections, have large amounts of monitoring equipment, and so on.

I looked for some studies, but everything I found was based on poorly designed experiments and aren't worth linking to.

(e.g., excluding all complications after the fact shows similar fetal outcomes, but more cesarians for hospital births; failing to exclude non-credentialed midwives shows more fetal deaths for home birth. Duh?).

[Balgair]

It may depend on state, but I thought that c-sections are MDs only. Given that ~30% of all births in the US are via c-section, I wouldn't agree that such cases are rare.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

If my sister is to be believed [0] C-sections are over-utilized by hospitals.

[0] I admit there is perhaps some bias here

[bee_rider]

This is a pretty widespread belief, right? Haven't looked into the actual underlying facts.

Looking at C-section rates:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283123/cesarean-sections...

If I were a woman I'd probably rather live in some of those low C-section countries than the high ones. But this is "policy analysis by general country vibes," probably not very accurate, haha.

[socialismisok]

You've missed the actual question. Giving birth is just one example of many medically dangerous activities. You can replace with auto accident, stroke, whatever.

[triceratops]

In my experience, the midwife was hands-on only in the last hour or so of labor. Everything before that was the nurses.