Why do we, then, continue to treat women as if their emotions and comfort, and the postures they might want to assume while in labor, are against the rules?

If you can't be a hero, you can at least be funny while being a chicken.

When you destroy midwives, you also destroy a body of knowledge that is shared by women, that can’t be put together by a bunch of surgeons or a bunch of male obstetricians, because physiologically, birth doesn’t happen the same way around surgeons, medically trained doctors, as it does around sympathetic women.

Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

Squat 300 times a day, you’re going to give birth quickly.

Simply put, when there is no home birth in a society, or when home birth is driven completely underground, essential knowledge of women’s capacities in birth is lost to the people of that society—to professional caregivers, as well as to the women of childbearing age themselves.

It's easy to scare women. It's even profitable to scare women... But it's not nice, so let's stop it.