All of this makes me so sad.
So many women are missing out (most by the horrendous unnecessary interventions once arriving at hospitals, admittedly) on what its really a rite of passage - designed to help us bond with our children and experience the incredible high (caused by oxytocin) of the realisation that our bodies are so capable of something so incredible.
What everyone has missed so far is the astonishing emotional experience that birthing your own baby (as opposed to having it 'delivered' of you by someone else) is.
(I know from personal experience of doing it both ways)
A baby born after a natural labour has the hormone oxytocin rushing through its body, along with its mother, promoting bonding and its ability to feed. Its lungs have been cleared as it takes part (and healthy babies do, if left alone) by moving and flexing their heads) in the journey down.
Babies whose cords stop pulsating before they are clamped and cut have a massively increased blood volume (differences in iron levels have been detected at 12 years of age) They also continue to receive oxygen through the cord, enabling them to begin breathing fully at their own pace.
Babies put down glycogen stores in their liver in readiness for labour, to enable them to manage it and the first few hours best. Babies induced are much more likely to suffer distress due to not being ready or well positioned (especially as due dates can be so wrong that some are actually premature). Babies born by cs have not have any of the benefits of labour.
The only reason a planned cs could be 'safer' than and emergency one is due to that baby not being already in distress due to the prior interventions (syntocinon induced contractions which are extremely painful, much less effective and cause the baby distress by putting so much stress on the uterus).
In all other cases a baby is far better off having had at least some labour - the more the better. They at least 'know' hormonally that they are going to be born.
I believe most women don't know all these things - I certainly didn't in my first pregnancy, submitting to all these things that robbed me of my birth experience and of being able to truly say I 'gave birth'. She wasn't 'born'. She was dragged out.
My second birth was not interfered with and lasted less than a third of the time. The pain was normal and I could manage it - not horrendous and caused by syntocinon.
I didn't suffer trauma - I felt empowered. He never got distressed. I BIRTHED my son! He was calm and fed instantly. It was incredible and no woman, through lack of information or by lack of staff, money or just for the convenience of the professionals involved, should be denied what is every woman's right.
Of course I believe in woman's choice (if there are medical/psychological issues that make abdominal surgery the 'best option') or if she has all of this (evidence-based) information and chooses not to take up her right to this amazing experience.
BTW I am not a natural birth nazi. I just feel passionate that women are being robbed of their right to be confident that their bodies and babies are designed to birth and the vast majority, if left alone, will benefit, not suffer from doing it.