The Business of Being Born (2008)

Birth: it's a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to explore the maternity care system in America. Focusing on New York City, the film reveals that there is much to distrust behind hospital doors and follows several couples who decide to give birth on their own terms. There is an unexpected turn when director Epstein not only discovers she is pregnant, but finds the life of her child on the line. Should most births should be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potential medical emergency?

IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995061/

Home Page:
http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/



A hundred years ago, nearly every American was born at home. This year, nearly every birth in America will happen in a hospital. Child birth has gone from being an ordinary, though sometimes perilous, life process typically attended by a midwife to being a medical procedure attended by an obstetrician and often ending in major surgery. Most Americans regard this as progress. The documentary The Business of Being Born, directed by Abby Epstein (Until the Violence Stops), challenges that assumption.

The Business of Being Born marshals a host of statistics to support the proposition that natural childbirth attended by a midwife is generally preferable to a hospital birth attended by an obstetrician. The United States spends more than twice as much as any other country per birth, yet it has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world. Delivery by Cesarean section, a major surgical procedure, occurs in one-third of deliveries in the United States, but is rare elsewhere. Epstein and executive producer Ricki Lake attribute much of this disparity in spending and health outcomes to the unnecessary medicalization of childbirth in the United States. In Europe and Japan, 70 percent of births are attended by midwives, but less than 8 percent are in the United States. In the Netherlands, one-third of childbirths occur at home, but in the United States less than one percent do.