Women's Right in Brazil

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We all have difficult decisions to make as we grow older, and sometimes we are lucky to make the right choices that will create our future. Men and women are always choosing what to do, what to wear or what to eat. But, while men has 99 decisions to make, women have 100 decision, including her children’s birth. Up to the present time, medicine has only developed two types of births, the natural (or vaginal) and the surgical (also known as Caesarian section) birth (Charlish). Mothers all around the world have been struggling to choose whether they will be delivering naturally or surgically. In Brazil, private hospitals and their doctors are being accused of not respecting the women’s decisions and performing a c-section against the women’s will and without it being medically necessary. In Brazil, almost 82 per cent of all births are c-sections, but not all of them are electively chosen by the mother or performed because it is medically needed (Khazan). Doctors in Brazil like to perform a c-section because it is less time consuming and allow them to earn more money.
According to Simone Diniz, associate professor in the department of maternal and child health at the University of São Paulo, a natural birth is “ugly”, “primitive … [and] it takes too long” (Khazan). On the contrary, a c-section is “considered quick, modern and in line with the preferred culture of schedule in Brazil” (Miley). Doctors use drugs to accelerate the process of the contractions and to make the process faster and less time consuming for both the mother and the doctor. The rise in the rate of c-sections performed in Brazil, which is, as mentioned above, 82 per cent of all births, was caused primarily because of “unwanted procedures rather than personal prefer...

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Works Cited

Charlish, Anne, and Linda Hughey. Holt. Birth-tech: Tests and Technology in Pregnancy and
Birth. New York: Facts on File, 1991. Print.
Frequently Asked Questions Labor, Delivery, and Postpartum Care. Rep. The American
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 2011. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
"Giving Birth by Cesarean Section." BabyCenter. BabyCenter, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Khazan, Olga. "Why Most Brazilian Women Get C-Sections." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media
Company, 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Lowdon, Gina, and Debbie Chappington Derrick. "Caesarean Section or Vaginal Birth - What
Difference Does It Make?" Caesarean Section or Vaginal Birth - What Difference
Does It Make? Belly Belly, 2002. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Miley, Marissa. "Expectations: Brazil's Cesarean Section Problem." GlobalPost. GlobalPost,
16 Apr. 2014. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

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