AtheneNoctua: your generalising remark about MWs mismanaging VBs is unfair. Yes, some MWs are less professional and competenet that we would hope; this is equally true of doctors, obstetricians, etc, and hundreds of posts on MN will testify. You are clearly biased towards CS - not, as you imply in your OP, in favour of "choice". To tar all MWs with the same brush is wrong.
There are fabulous midwives out there. 3 of them attended my amazing homebirth. I still think of them a lot, nearly a year later. In fact, I'll be sending them each a card to thank them for the fantastic are they gave me, and continued to give me weeks after my DD's birth.
WRT the OP. It's a tricky issues, obviously. CS is a rational choice insofar as, in the developed world, it pretty much eliminates the terrifying, albeit relatively rare, risks which attend VBs, e.g. brain damage to the baby, etc. If you were presented with the follow info, "a child born by CS will not suffer brain damage; a baby born by VB could", then you would be rational to choose a CS. All the advantages of VB: the effect on the baby's lungs; the exposure to the mother's bacteria; exposure to labour hormones; etc; are pretty much rendered negligible by modern medicine, I should think. There's no way of denying that, I suppose. The 1 in however many thousands chance of damage to the baby is clearly a major factor in influencing people's reason. If CS were available as a choice, no questions asked, I imagine we would see Brazilian levels of uptake.
I think the fact that luck is such a huge element of birth (and I say this as someone who was very lucky with her birth experience: homebirth, no tearing, no side effects, etc.) would compel people to choose the option where luck is factored out.