The medicalization of the birth process is supported by the extremely high esteem in which our society holds medical doctors. The "doctors are God" complex causes women to accept their obstetrician's assertions and recommendations without question. This leads to uninformed decisions, instead of informed consent, and can cause women to take avoidable risks and to feel that they have no control over the birth process. Women are told that their bodies are inadequate, incapable of delivering a baby without a doctor's assistance, and they believe it. A pregnant woman says to another, "If your doctor says that baby's ready, then by golly it's ready!" Women have unquestioning faith in their obstetricians.
An article in
Policy Review, "How the West Really Lost God," suggests one source of this "doctors are God" complex. The article discusses how traditional family structure encourages religion. One explanation for this: the experience of birth. Birth is "an event transcendental as no other... a moment of communion with something larger than oneself... [part of]
the critical foundational bond of human beings." The article puts forth birth as a religious experience, or at least an experience opening people's minds to religious concepts. Perhaps the leading role of obstetricians in this profound moment feeds directly into our esteem of medical doctors. It seems likely that the medicalization of birth is a major contributor to the "doctors are God" complex.
Perhaps this feedback loop, "doctors are God because we need them to give birth, and we need them to give birth because doctors are God," explains some of the vehemence with which medical trade unions oppose midwifery. Take the doctor out of the birth process, and women will realize that their bodies are capable of more than they ever believed. A midwife supports a woman while she delivers a baby -- an obstetrician "delivers" the baby for the woman. If our own bodies are capable of this amazing process, where else might conventional medicine be unnecessary? Midwifery care introduces women to gentle remedies, safe for pregnancy and effective for many common complaints. I wonder whether women who use a professional or lay midwife are less likely to patronize medical doctors and conventional medicine for the rest of their lives? Perhaps there is more turf at stake here for the doctors than just birth.
While many (probably most) doctors are not in the profession primarily for the prestige, it seems likely that the doctors who rise through the ranks of trade unions like the AMA and ACOG are motivated by the feeling of power. They want society to elevate doctors in higher and higher esteem. Acknowledging that women can give birth without a doctor present cuts into a powerful strengthener of our perception of doctors as omniscient and omnipotent. Some medical doctors will go to any lengths to deny that women give birth.
