Preterm Babies, Fetal Patients, and Childbearing Choices

230 Pages·2015·0.853 MB·English

by  John D. Lantos, Diane S. Lauderdale

Preterm Babies, Fetal Patients, and Childbearing
Choices
Basic Bioethics
Arthur Caplan, editor
A complete list of the books in the Basic Bioethics series appears at the
back of this book.
Preterm Babies, Fetal Patients, and Childbearing
Choices
John D. Lantos and Diane S. Lauderdale
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying,
recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in
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[email protected].
This book was set in Stone by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the
United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lantos, John D., author.
Preterm babies, fetal patients, and childbearing choices / John D. Lantos
and Diane S. Lauderdale.
p. cm. — (Basic bioethics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-02959-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
I. Lauderdale, Diane S., 1955– , author. II. Title. III. Series: Basic bio-
ethics.[DNLM: 1. Premature Birth—etiology—United States. 2. Infant
Mortality—trends—United States. 3. Infant, Premature—United States.
4.Obstetrics—trends—United States. 5. Prenatal Care—United States.
6. Reproductive Behavior—United States. WQ 330]
RJ250
618.3’97—dc23
2015009281
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Series Foreword vii
Acknowledgments ix
1 Two Narratives about Pregnancy in the Twentieth
Century 1
2 Individual Decisions: A 34-Year-Old Pregnant Woman at
36 Weeks 23
3 Stillbirth 35
4 Late Preterm Birth 41
5 Are There Too Many C-sections? 51
6 Feminist Critiques of Obstetrics 63
7 The Debate about Home Birth 73
8 Are C-sections Good for Women (and Babies, Too)? 87
9 The Fetus Becomes a Patient 95
10 The Pill (and Delayed Childbearing) 111
11 The Changing Demography of Childbearing 119
12 Maternal Age, Multiple Pregnancies, and Preterm
Birth 127
13 Maternal Age and Infertility 131
14 Changing Demography and Preterm Birth Rates 135
15 Your Fetus Becomes a Baby 141
vi Contents
16 A Defense of Modern Obstetrics 143
17 Neonatal Intensive Care and Infant Mortality 149
18 The Evolution of Prenatal Care 153
19 International Comparisons 169
20 The Paradox of Modern Prenatal Care 173
21 Conclusions 181
Notes 187
Index 213
Series Foreword
Glenn McGee and I developed the Basic Bioethics series and col-
laborated as series coeditors from 1998 to 2008. In Fall 2008 and
Spring 2009 the series was reconstituted, with a new Editorial
Board, under my sole editorship. I am pleased to present the
forty-sixth book in the series.
The Basic Bioethics series makes innovative works in bioethics
available to a broad audience and introduces seminal scholarly
manuscripts, state-of-the-art reference works, and textbooks.
Topics engaged include the philosophy of medicine, advancing
genetics and biotechnology, end-of-life care, health and social
policy, and the empirical study of biomedical life. Interdisciplin-
ary work is encouraged.
Arthur Caplan
Basic Bioethics Series Editorial Board
Joseph J. Fins
Rosamond Rhodes
Nadia N. Sawicki
Jan Helge Solbakk

Acknowledgments
This book has had a decade-long gestation. It would not have
been possible without a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson
Health Policy Investigators Program. That grant would not have
been possible without discussions about the problem of pre-
term birth that we had with many colleagues at the University
of Chicago. William Meadow and Larry Casalino made valuable
comments on our earliest proposals to study the problem of pre-
term birth. The RWJ program not only provided funding for the
project but also provided an opportunity to present our work in
progress at annual meetings to a group of attentive, critical, and
helpful scholars.
We were lucky to work with Tyler VanderWeele and Juned
Siddique. Both helped design and carry out the empirical analy-
ses about changes in childbearing over the last few decades that
formed the first stage of our project. Both were lead authors of
papers whose results informed our evolving understanding of
preterm birth. Scott Moses gave valuable feedback on an earlier
draft of the manuscript. Katharine Lauderdale created the figures
for the book.
We were given opportunities to try out the arguments in the
book at medical conferences and grand rounds presentations at