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I am frequently amazed at the strange perceptions about childbirth that are out there. I should know, I teach college students, and they have a full set of serious opinions on a process they know nothing about. I was worried when I thought I read your suggestion that traumatic births come from merely psychological causes (prior trauma or sex abuse.) But you wrote especially. I would like to underscore this point: traumatic birth is a medical designation, and to keep in mind that it is not just something a previously traumatized person experiences: it can be a result of severe tearing (and please imagine how severe this gets) and all sorts of other complications, many of which are not just psychologically dangerous.
And I always think it is helpful to remind people that the "natural" rate of death in pregnancy was upwards of 10% for the mother. So to act (as Jezebel and Babble did) as if modern medicine has introduced the trauma of birth is-- insane. To think women were not terrified of their odds in previous eras is-- ignorant and inexcusable.
