C-sections all round: time to leave the Stone Age

A DRAFT proposal by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) would see all women givem the right to choose to give birth by Caesarean section, regardless of medical need. About a quarter of all births in the UK are done by C-section, a figure expected to increase if the proposal is introduced in its current form.

How can the NHS afford this?
This is a "potentially hugely-expensive move", says Tamara Cohen in the Daily Mail. Caesareans cost roughly £800 more than natural births, and, according to the paper, economists have calculated that "reducing uptake by one percentage point could save the NHS £5.6million a year".

As a result, adds Cohen, it is "likely women in some areas may still be refused on cost grounds".

The cost means the plans would be "unworkable", according to leading doctors who spoke to Hannah Devlin and Chris Smyth at The Times. Siobhan Quenby, a spokeswoman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told the paper the sector has "terrible financial pressures to decrease the Caesarean section rate... there's no funding".

The natural-birth case is being lost
Nice is "caught in a dilemma" says an editorial in The Independent. While financial pressures on the health bill might make these proposals "look like a step in the wrong direction", this must be "weighed against the mantra of patient choice".

Further, says the Independent, several factors - including an increase in the birthing age, rising obesity levels among pregnant women, and a decline in the birth rate - mean that Caesareans are often safer and more comfortable than natural birth. This will not change anytime soon.

A woman's choice to go pain-free
Why should nature, the same force that floods Bangkok, shakes Turkey, and allows malaria to decimate Africa, "stalk, unchecked, our neo-natal units and homes," asks Cristina Odone in The Daily Telegraph.

This move means that childbirth is finally leaving the Stone Age, adds Odone, and women can choose "a procedure that does away with all that pain and horror".

I'm "delighted", agrees Conservative MP Louise Mensch. It's great that some women have a high pain threshold, she tweeted this morning, but for many others "labour is torture".

"Women do society a massive service by bearing children," Mensch adds, "and society owes it to them to make them comfortable." ·