FORM LETTER (Delete this heading and
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Maria Shriver
Office of the First Lady
State Capital Building
Sacramento, CA 95814

Mothers Day 2004

Dear First Lady,

I am writing on behalf of the Consortium for the Evidence-based practice of Obstetrics (CEO). The medically-interventive, obstetrical model used routinely on healthy women causes major problems. Obstetrical intervention for healthy women is not scientifically-based. We need public dialog to bring about appropriate changes in our national maternity care policy and the reform these potentially harmful obstetrical practices.

Physiological management provides the safest and most cost-effective form of maternity care and is associated with the lowest rate of maternal and perinatal mortality and the greatest wellbeing of mother and baby. Science-based or ‘physiological’ model of childbirth should be the universal standard for healthy women with normal pregnancies for healthy populations.

Legislative hearings are necessary so childbearing families who have had negative experiences with the current system can testify on problems such as:

(1) off-label use of Cytotec for labor induction & increasing percentage of non-medical induction
(2) the ever-climbing cesarean section and maternal mortality rate that is 30th in the developed world
(3) the danger in promoting the maternal choice cesarean as an idealized form of childbirth
(4) the physically damaging effects on the pelvic floor and pelvic organs associated with medical management of vaginal birth --

Examples include: procedures or policies that keep a laboring woman confined to bed such as continuous electronic fetal monitoring, the use of artificial hormones to stimulate or accelerate labor, narcotics, epidural anesthesia, requiring the mother to labor or push in anti-gradational positions, prolonged-breathe holding, episiotomy, operative delivery, etc

The need for a new law requiring physicians to provide full information about the risks of each significant medical or surgical intervention and to obtain truly informed consent before substituting medical and surgical interventions in place of the safer, evidence-based principles of physiological management.

Thanking you in advance,

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