Wednesday

a women's health poll

A new poll asks about YOUR VIEWS on the right to videotape hospital births.

6 comments:

Rachel said...

Thanks for the link, Katie.

Anonymous said...

still pictures are enough> I cant imagine anyone videotaping a birth. Ugh.

Anonymous said...

In the hospital here you are not allowed any photography whatsoever during active labor and delivery. This is to minimize their liability if there are problems. i disagreed on principle, but I was a bit too busy with giving birth to complain at the time.

Anonymous said...

At St. Mary's our midwife actually took pictures for us during a c-section. We really don't look at them that much, but we have them.

Anonymous said...

actually I totally understand the legal liabilty issue. Yes, there are cases where doctors screw up and deserve to be held accountable. BUT in this day and age anything that goes wrong has to be blamed on someone, even if its just "one of those things".
People who file frivolous lawsuits are the ones to blame for the fact that you cannot videotape your birth. its not the hosptial. and personally, having sat through the birth video of a friend of a friend (after dinner no less...I almost lost my meal thanks to the unexpected "entertainment") I cant understand why ANYONE would want to capture birth so graphically. Holding the baby is enough. In one college class we got to see a birth film. the main effect this had on me was to reaaallly ponder just how much I ever ever wanted to go through an experience like this. I had flashbacks years later when I finally was about six months along. It was not reassuring. sometimes ignorance is bliss.(sorta like my last medical procedure where i "had" to view a film of the whole thing on the internet or get scolded by my doctor. some things are just best left unseen,knowing exactly what they were doing in there was just TMI) We have gone from being afraid to even say the word "pregnant" (a bad extreme) to absolutely no aspect of the birth process being a private event (another bad extreme). Honestly I think that some people are more fascinated with the birth than with the child they are going to welcome into the family. I think some of these people with scads of kids are just birth junkies.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't film--or photograph--a birth, but I think you should have the right to do so. I'm not surprised at all, though, that liability concerns are driving this policy.