The Business of Being Born  has me wondering about the meanings of motherhood, nature vs. culture, science, and the Hippocratic Oath. Has there always been this much tension between mothers and doctors? I have heard of the guilt trip every mother that chooses a milk machine has to go through. Personally, I doubt that the benefits are worth the heartache the arguments cause Mothers that do not breastfeed, but I am pretty glad I was breastfed myself. When it comes to health concerns, it seems there is so much contradictory schools of thought out there. First chocolate is good for you, then it's bad; have a glass of red wine every night for your heart, but then you're an alcoholic; a single cigarette harms the baby, but quitting will cause them stress too. I was told sheep's dung was a presumed cure for smallpox only a couple hundred years ago.

This article is another example of good intentions gone awry when it comes to prenatal care:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19443910
 Who knows what medicines we take daily now that will prove harmful in a few decades. But aren't many mothers doctors themselves, and therefore the definition of informed consent?

Language, agency, and access to information proves to be at the core of these issues when it comes to women, once again. As Frank Dikotter, author of "Race Culture" in our textbooks, says: Eugenics was not so much a clear set of scientific principles as a 'modern' way of talking about social problems in biologizing terms... Eugenics gave scientific authority to social fears and moral panics". Having limited access to information, not getting the whole story, being unable to interpret the language of the medical profession, or being unable to articulate your own wants and needs (common problems for women trained in passivity) makes for a lot of junk science going around, and problems down the line. However, believing in spirits or a pseudoscience can probably be just as harmful as seeing the body as a machine, comprised of mechanisms, gears, good and bad bacteria, and not a temple for the soul. After years and years of grueling study of the human body, most doctors prefer to simply think of the body as meat and organized bone. There's only so many babies you can birth before it just becomes muscle memory, 99% common sense, right?

Though, doctors for the most part, we must remember, are drawn to the profession out of the desire to help people.