More and more women are giving birth not in the throes of natural labor, but under the bright lights of operating rooms, cut open before their bodies are even allowed to do what they were built to do.
On paper, cesarean section deliveries are meant to save lives – when things go wrong, they can be a blessing. But in recent years, far too many women across Jammu and Kashmir are undergoing C-sections not because they need them, but because they’re being nudged, hurried, or frightened into them.
As a report in this newspaper reveals, it often begins with a phrase: “It’s safer for the baby.” Or, “We don’t want to take risks.” A doctor might mention a slightly large baby, or not enough “amniotic fluid”—medical terms that sound alarming, even if they’re not backed by urgency. And just like that, a pregnant woman who comes in prepared for a normal delivery finds herself on an operating table, robbed of the chance to labor.
These aren’t isolated incidents. Health experts now warn of a disturbing trend—a systemic drift toward surgical births, driven less by genuine medical need and more by convenience, control, and, in some cases, profit. For hospitals, C-sections are faster, more predictable, and more lucrative. For women, the cost is their health.
Women from rural or remote areas, ironically, are faring better. With less medical surveillance and more trust in natural processes, many go on to deliver healthy babies naturally. Urban women, on the other hand, despite access to advanced care, are increasingly caught in a spiral of overmedicalization.
This has been proven to have health consequences for the babies born via unnecessary C-section: They miss out on critical exposure to maternal bacteria that kickstart their immune systems. Many of these newborns end up struggling with breathing issues or infections.
For mothers, the emotional toll is no less severe. Recovery from major abdominal surgery is painful and slow. Breastfeeding becomes harder. So women should not be scared into surgery. The growing commercialization of childbirth demands urgent scrutiny. People have a right to know whether cesareans are rightly warranted at the scale they are conducted or just driven by a pursuit of profit by a multitude of nursing homes.
However, the issue is not as simple. The question is how people are supposed to know and who will tell them? Here, we are dealing with the medical profession and the doctors prescribing the C-Section can always claim an expert knowledge, something others can’t. At the same time, this doesn’t mean that the disproportionate rise in C-Section births is normal. It needs to be scrutinized and the government is in the best position to do so.
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