THE PLOWBOY INTERVIEW

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Let me put the same thing in male terms. Suppose you, Pat Stone, got married and wanted to start a family, but someone came up to you and said, "I really don't think you should be the father, Pat. You just don't have the qualities. Maybe your wife should be artificially inseminated." And suppose further — as is generally the case with women in hospitals — you had to go along with that advice. Boy, would your perception of yourself be damaged!

PLOWBOY: Another common form of hospital intervention is the administration of a wide range of drugs . . . painkillers as well as labor-inducers. Does this practice also produce negative effects?

TOMPSON: Any medication given to the mother will pass right through the placenta and affect the baby, whose immature nervous system is much less capable of handling it. Furthermore, such drugs can disrupt the bonding between the mother and infant at delivery . . . simply because one or both may not be alert enough to respond during those important first shared moments. The medications may also set the baby's nursing back. It might be days before the child can learn to nurse well.

Most important, as Yvonne Brackbill (a graduate research professor at the University of Florida, who's considered by many to be a leading world authority on the behavioral effects of obstetrical medications) points out, many such drugs can cause long-lasting, or even permanent, damage. She estimates that maternal anesthetics and painkillers produce an average IQ loss of four points in newborns.

Remember, most of the drugs administered during childbirth have been approved by the FDA for many medical purposes but not specifically for use in deliveries. Why, even the Commission on Drugs of the American Pediatric Association has stated that "no drug has been proven safe for the fetus when taken by pregnant women".

PLOWBOY: What about other common hospital procedures, such as performing an episiotomy — the surgical cutting of a woman's birth canal — or using forceps in a delivery? Do you feel that those practices are also overdone?

TOMPSON: Definitely. A survey made in Chicago indicated that about 95% of the birthing women there get episiotomies. Not only are those cuts psychologically damaging — because they're yet another way of saying to the mother, "God or nature didn't make you right" — but they're also likely to get infected . . . and the straight incision doesn't even heal as well as does a natural tear. On top of all that, there's some evidence that women who have episiotomies may actually rip or tear worse than those who don't have them.

And forceps can cause cerebral palsy or other permanent neurological injuries to the baby. All too often, they're seen as just another way of hurrying up the game, of not having to stay closely in tune with nature's birth processes.

PLOWBOY: Are you saying there are no justifiable reasons for performing such interventive procedures?

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