What's behind the C-section ban in Turkey?
The Turkish government has banned elective C-sections in private healthcare facilities. According to the Ministry of Health, the move aims to lower the number of caesarian section births, which usually require a longer recovery period until the next pregnancy, in order to promote population growth. Commentators look at pros and cons.
An attack on self-determination
Newspaper taz is incensed:
“What is purportedly a health policy measure turns out to be an authoritarian demonstration of power - and a transparent attempt to divert attention from the protests and political tensions in the country. The decision as to how a woman may give birth has been declared a matter of state and their physical self-determination deliberately restricted. ... At a time when democracy, freedom of the press and the judiciary are under pressure, this encroachment on the most intimate of rights seems like a surgically precise intervention in self-determination. Without anaesthetic, of course.”
Better than the current pressure
Commenting in Habertürk, columnist Nagehan Alçı backs the government's campaign for normal childbirth:
“Many women I know, including myself, have given birth by caesarean not because their health required it, but because they were not given the option of a normal birth. ... For years, the overwhelming majority of patients of 'famous' doctors have been cut open during labour in private clinics. ... Defending the C-section dictate is not defending women's bodies. On the contrary, it means defending the postnatal suffering women are subjected to simply because doctors find this option more convenient. That is why I support the campaign for normal birth!”