Reproductive rights and the medical care system: a plea for rational health policy

Recently, there have been many challenges to women's reproductive rights and freedoms: court-ordered cesarean sections; criminal cases against women for prenatal child abuse; and attempts to limit the practice of mid-wifery, home birth, and the operation of alternative birth centers. In these cases, medicine has been complicit or proactive in attempts to control the behavior or health care options of pregnant women. We discuss medicine's role as an agent of social control, the medical reconstruction of problems that are social in nature, and the need for a more coherent policy framework to guide physician practices.