Film Analysis: The Business Of Being Born
The Business of Being Born is a film about exploring the many options women have for maternity care in America. Actress Ricki Lake, reached out to fellow filmmaker, Abby Epstein, to help her uncover and film the different options that a mother has when it comes to choosing how she will deliver her child. The film is focused in New York City and on several couples who have chosen to give birth in an environment outside of the hospital. Each couple was followed through out their pregnancy and during the birth to show the contrast between births in a hospital and births outside of the hospital. The film also provided many statistics and professional opinions about midwifery and births in hospitals. The variety of options for maternal care and
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Medicalization is defined as the process whereby normal functions of the body come to be seen as indicative of disease (Shaw & Lee). Birth is a natural process that has become associated with having to go to the hospital, having to be given medication and in worst-case scenarios undergoing surgery. Giving birth is not a condition or a disease that requires for a woman to seek a hospital, but in todays society it is seen as an obligation to go because if a women doesn’t go to a hospital to give birth she is looked down upon. She is labeled to be a bad mother putting her child at risk by giving birth with someone who is not professionally trained and is in an inappropriate environment. Also the topic of reproductive freedom is an important issue. Reproductive freedom allows a woman to decide what she will do with her body and how she is going to do it. Because women are not aware or given the information about all the options they have, they are being robbed of that right. There are many other options, aside from going to the hospital that does not limit the choice of how a woman will deliver her child. In some cases in hospitals a mother is forced to have procedures or be given medicine with out fully knowing the consequences and this also takes away from her rights to reproductive
Medicalization is defined as the process whereby normal functions of the body come to be seen as indicative of disease (Shaw & Lee). Birth is a natural process that has become associated with having to go to the hospital, having to be given medication and in worst-case scenarios undergoing surgery. Giving birth is not a condition or a disease that requires for a woman to seek a hospital, but in todays society it is seen as an obligation to go because if a women doesn’t go to a hospital to give birth she is looked down upon. She is labeled to be a bad mother putting her child at risk by giving birth with someone who is not professionally trained and is in an inappropriate environment. Also the topic of reproductive freedom is an important issue. Reproductive freedom allows a woman to decide what she will do with her body and how she is going to do it. Because women are not aware or given the information about all the options they have, they are being robbed of that right. There are many other options, aside from going to the hospital that does not limit the choice of how a woman will deliver her child. In some cases in hospitals a mother is forced to have procedures or be given medicine with out fully knowing the consequences and this also takes away from her rights to reproductive