MrsJRT, I think you are missing the point. The care needs there but they are not always met. Many women are forced out of bed because staff feel under pressure to do it, but they are traumatised by the results. For those women with CS's, my colleague often talks of how she couldn't get over the difference between aftercare post-appendicitis and birth, when she had to try to get a baby out of a cot while catheterised with no help or support and was chastised for not getting up and going to the toilet within hours when she had been scolded for trying after "major surgery" for her appendix.
After my vaginal birth (with Kielland's forceps, so catheterised/spinal block etc), my experience of postnatal care was being roared at by a very unsympathetic midwife because I had dropped wipes on the floor. "I'm not here to clean up after you! Get out of bed!". I had no feeling in my legs FFS! I was told I couldn't change my baby on the bed, but was supposed to do this on the tiny leaf of the cot stand when I couldn't get out of bed. I was told that I needed to sit up to feed and when I complained that I couldn't, was barked at some more because I should have realised it would hurt 
. I was treated like a piece of shit by people working on busy postnatal wards and I have no sympathy for the view that the "pressures" they faced allowed this appalling behaviour to be manifest.
It was degrading and humiliating and when I finally plucked up the courage to complain after reading the post-natal thread on here and so many similar experiences from so many women, I was told that as 12 months had passed it was tough luck, they didn't even want to know but I could have someone to "debrief" with. Yes, because that would make substandard care better next time? What about all that NHS bumph about "learning"? Yeah, right, they couldn't give two shits about how poorly I'd been treated, they simply knew I couldn't sue so there was no consequent need for "learning".
MrsJRT, yes, departments are squeezed but the NHS needs to get a GRIP, you can't dictate what the evidence says because people are "overstretched". And, let's face it, anyone who works in the NHS knows that a great deal of wastage is caused by the significant proportion of inefficient, bored, lazy and downright cruel staff who do everything slowly and think that patients owe them a favour just for needing care. Propped up by managers who talk nothing but jargon and sit in lengthy meetings about NHS brand nonsense and are paid more than medical and frontline staff to do so, making decisions on what glossy leaflet to print next. We know these people exist, I have seen plenty of them on wards and on Trust corridors, and yet what is at question here is denying women a choice which might save endless psychological trauma - I would rather see the dead wood of the NHS trimmed than see this cost argument rage.
The evidence says it is warranted, the evidence says that it should be allowed. That is a health basis for this decision in the limited cases it would apply wrt mental health concerns and previous traumatic experiences not alleviated by counselling. The evidence takes precedence over how hard staff find it in squeezed departments, frankly. The NHS needs to find a way to give good care and not create moral issues because of poor standards being allowed to flourish and staff pressures are NO EXCUSE for allowing women to be degraded and demoralised because it is seen as women being too posh to push!