Fish can't see water: the need to humanize birth

Humanized birth puts the woman in the center and in control, focuses on community based primary maternity care with midwives, nurses and doctors working together in harmony as equals, and has evidence based services. Western, medicalized, high tech maternity care under obstetric control usually dehumanizes, often leads to unnecessary, costly, dangerous, invasive obstetric interventions and should never be exported to developing countries. Midwives and planned out-of-hospital births are perfectly safe for low-risk births. (C) 2001 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. All rights reserved.