08/07/2026
Let's talk about the unnecessary C-section. I know this conversation makes people uncomfortable. We're going to have it anyway.
Because we cannot prevent something we refuse to talk about.
Nearly one in three American women now gives birth via major abdominal surgery. That number is not a reflection of women's bodies suddenly forgetting how to birth. It is a reflection of a system that intervenes first and asks questions later.
Here's the story I hear again and again.
An induction is scheduled. Maybe for a "big baby." Maybe for going a few days past a due date. Maybe just because it's convenient, and the cervix isn't remotely ready.
Pitocin begins. The body isn't primed, so labor is long, artificial, and grueling. Hours pass. The cervix, forced before it was ready, is slow to change.
"Failure to progress."
Except it wasn't failure. It was a process that was rushed before it ever had a chance to work.
More interventions stack up. An epidural. More Pitocin. Baby starts to show distress from contractions they were never designed to withstand. And then, the words: "We need to do a C-section. It's an emergency."
And a surgeon rescues everyone from an emergency that the cascade created in the first place.
Afterward, she is told her body failed.
That her baby was "too big." That her pelvis was "too small." That it's a good thing she was already at the hospital.
She believes it. She carries it into her next pregnancy and the one after that. And a system that manufactured the emergency gets to look like the hero.
I know this is uncomfortable to read. Especially if it's your story. And please hear me clearly: if you had a C-section, you did nothing wrong. You made the best decision you could with the information you were given in the moment. Your birth is not less. You are not less. C-sections are sometimes genuinely necessary and genuinely life-saving, and I am grateful they exist.
But we have to be honest about how many are not necessary. Because comfort has never once prevented a single unnecessary surgery.
Prevention starts before labor even begins.
It starts with choosing a provider who believes in your body. Who doesn't reach for induction without a real medical reason. Who understands that a cervix opens on its own timeline, not the hospital's. Who trusts the process God designed and only intervenes when there is a true, genuine need.
Your body was designed to birth your baby. Not perfectly, not always easily, and not in every single case without help. But far, far more often than our C-section rate would ever suggest.
We can't fix what we won't discuss. So let's discuss it.
