I think that Elisheva Urbas has hit on something quite important here.
There is a difference between theory and practice. This often comes up
among Doulas as well as LCs. Of course doulas want all women to have
completely natural, unmedicated, woman attended births. We are a long
way from that in the US. We don't want to abandon those women who have
made choices that we may see as babysteps........so we, in practice,
support them even in their elective inductions, epidurals.....
Interestingly, we do still see a decrease in length of labor, decrease
in risk of C-section etc. Our help is valuable...even in the less than
ideal world!

The judge story reminded me of the last DONA conference I attended. Same
issues.

Susan Keith-Hergert RN, MS, CPN, IBCLC