Carmen Walker didn't realize how bad things had gotten until she heard her doctor's voice from across the operating room: "I'm going to try to save her uterus."
Walker had delivered her first child by caesarean section, so when she became pregnant a second time, doctors didn't think twice before scheduling another. And then another and another. Now, giving birth to her sixth child, she was experiencing the consequences: placenta accreta, a condition which is linked to multiple C-sections and can result in fatal bleeding.
Caesarean sections have saved the lives of millions of infants who might have otherwise been killed or permanently injured during difficult births. But in the US, the rate of caesareans has increased so much over the decades that the surgery has been transformed from a life-saving intervention into a procedure performed as a matter of course during one in three US births.
In 2015, the latest year for which the Centers for Disease Control has data, the share of births by C-section was 32%. The World Health Organization has suggested that the rate should not be higher than 10% - 15%, while other experts have suggested it should not be higher than 19%. The last time the US's rate was that low was during the 1970s.
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/04/one-in-three-us-births-happen-by-c-section-caesarean-births?
