Cesarean delivery (Part 3): Is it time to embrace elective procedures?
In June 2000, I arrived a few minutes late to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' headquarters for a meeting of the Committee on Obstetric Practice. As Chair, I was used to dealing with political hot potatoes, but that day, I was handed a real sizzler. Earlier that morning, then ACOG president, Benjamin Harer, MD, speaking for himself and not the College, had seemingly endorsed "elective" cesarean deliveries (CD) in an interview with Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America." After watching an excerpt of the interview in which Dr. Harer debated a non-physician advocate of home VBACs attended by midwives, I was struck by the logic of his arguments and his grace under fire. Yet it fell to my committee to restate ACOG's official position against such surgeries, which we did in a press release
