Green Party pledge to reduce c section rates

They have no understanding of biology.

Apparently the Green Party co-lead’s children were both delivered by c-section!

Well let's all be thankful they will never get in govt. It's looney ideas like this that seriously harm their chances of getting seats in marginal areas.

I think they should focus on having clean water with enough reservoirs so we can all survive in the next 30 years, and supporting the NHS to make evidence based decisions using the correct number of qualified staff.

no hospital wants you to have a C section unless you need it. No one wants you to have an intervention you don’t need. They just want you and your baby to survive childbirth. The heart rate of your unborn child, your heart rate and your temperature and pretty good markers. I don’t need a green MP telling me to ignore those warning signs and just try for a ‘natural birth’.

At least they are including a commitment to improving maternity care as a talking point in their manifesto.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67238868

Poor maternity tolerated as normal, inquiry says
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4n1jv7xxpwo?trk=public_post_comment-text

The inquiry full text, in executive summary
”Women frequently felt they had been subjected to interventions they had not consented to…”
https://www.theo-clarke.org.uk/sites/www.theo-clarke.org.uk/files/2024-05/Birth%20Trauma%20Inquiry%20Report%20for%20Publication_May13_2024.pdf

The focus should be on improving care for women, not on a specific intervention like c section. Improved care overall would probably reduce the need for c sections, as a side effect.

I want to vote for green party for their environmental policies. But their views on other things such as this mean I won't.

Thing is, people do think “well I don’t like the tories or Labour but I do like the environment so I’ll vote Green” without having the first idea what their policies are actually about.

I think it's the job of our government to manage all areas of our country is it not? The NHS is a government run body so yeah I'd say they have control over it.

There are far too many interventions in pregnancy and birth and many many studies have shown that these actually increase the risks to mother and baby. Hospitals intervene to protect themselves from suing if something goes wrong "we did all we could".

It’s such a strange thing, the Green Party.

I think they realised ages ago that they are the knee jerk protest vote and they are capitalising on this by moving away from the green agenda and going for some really bonkers ideas.

I suppose the thinking about Caesarians would be about going back to Mother Nature, or something?

Might not go into labour? Breaking the waters is done to speed up labour not start it and it has been observed that this has been misused to speed up labour in maternity wards that are understaffed, with not enough beds and labouring mums have to be conveyer belted & hurried along because speed is more important than mum or baby’s safety/suffering or post birth complications to healing, future fertility, infant bonding and childbirths.

To start labour, you usually induce with pitocin drip.

I do think c sections are on the rise as mothers are being treated crappily. Understaffed, under resourced maternity units can lead to a cascade of interventions as well as making childbirth as stressful and unpleasant as possible. I honestly wonder how many cases of PND are caused by being treated shoddily in labour, then the shocking levels of sleep deprivation you get to experience on the ward. I know everyone says you forget the horrors of childbirth due to hormones etc. which feels like gas lighting in all honesty. If you treated prisoners the way we, sometimes (not all hospitals/ maternity units are like this I hope), treat new mothers you’d be in contravention of Article 3 of ECHR.

Improve prenatal/ antenatal care. C sections stats will resolve themselves.

I don’t agree at all. Any review the Greens would fund would be conducted by experts- OB consultants, midwives. Saying there may be too many interventions causing unnecessary csections isn’t saying that all interventions are unnecessary and all csections are unnecessary.

This.

Medical interventions save lives. Including mine. Weasle words in political policies mean "funnel people into the cheaper options". Some births are straightforward and can take place with minimal midwife support and little medical resources. Others need a lot of interventions and if you don't know which you are going to get it's sensible to be near where those interventions can be delivered swiftly as soon as the need is detected.

That is for the advisory group to determine, it’s not a politicians place to dictate or promise medical solutions to a medical problem.

Politicians create advisory groups of doctors and consultants to review NHS practices, advise on changes to management & funding models for the NHS and to write/update the NICE guidelines all the time. It’s a good practice.

The politicians don’t do it themselves, they are simply pledging that they will fund to have the review done by the expert doctors and consultants.

It is well known that maternity care on the NHS is very poor. Who else would establish and fund a complete review with aim to improve it if not our government? and that requires politicians committing to it.

In schools, when they have ' mock elections', the Green Party always wins as school age pupils think they are all about saving the earth and making it nicer for everyone.

As an adult, we know there is a ' dark side' to the Green Party. They are often very conservatively religious, and can often come up with idealistic but completely unrealistic policies.

This is a great example, of course in an ideal world there wouldn't be as many caesareans, but they are a vital medical intervention that saves lives both of mothers and new borns. It's ridiculous to have this as a manifesto issue.

My judgement is slightly clouded though as we have a perennial Green Party candidate in my area that always comes 4th in any election, does no campaigning whatsoever, and takes vital votes away from the Labour candidates which allows the Tories to get dangerously close to getting in.

In my opinion, as a general rule, no politician has any business in anything of apolitical nature. But then the NHS exists, so my opinion has been moot for at least the last half century.

I think many people don’t realise what the greens are like these days and still think the environment is there entire focus when in fact it is nonsense like this and men in frocks and wigs. Women have been thrown out of the party if they dare to question.
As for elective c sections I think choice should be available to all women balanced with proper medical advice before they make their decision.
I am also sick of men spouting their views on issues about women's bodies.
No fanny, no vote.

It’s extremely ignorant, especially in the wake of reports into maternity scandals that showed mothers being forced into dangerous births that often led to the loss of their babies (and sometimes the mum too.) Birth is a significant undertaking and if a woman wants a c-section, she should be able to have one, even if that reason is that she does not want to give birth vaginally. A lot of talk about it being major surgery and the recovery (which it is, I had one) but many women suffer third degree tears or have lifelong continence issues. There is risk associated with birth and women should be able to make an informed choice and no talk of “expense” coming into it.

Exactly. Anyone with any level of interest in history should know that.

This is an absolutely disgraceful policy which needs to be binned immediately.

For example, breaking your waters manually increases risk of cord prolapse which causes an emergency csection. If they didn’t intervene to break your waters, then that risk and the resultant number of csections disappear.

But if they didn't break your waters you might not go into labour. In which case it might result in a stillborn due to placenta failure etc.

I wonder what the rato of men to women in the party is reviewing this.

I'm now a green voter without a political 'home'

I've always been 'green', doing what I can to reduce environmental damage and be very mindful of resource use - but I simply can't vote for the Green Party because of their left wing stance on a lot of things. It is possible to be 'green' without being on the left/being a socialist, and I wish they'd realise this.

And they just lost any hope of ever getting my vote.