Depends very much on the country. In eg Brazil, 55% (!) of all births are by C-section.

https://www.bellybelly.com.au/birth/highest-c-section-rates-...

That is some of the most depressing data I have seen / read. :(

Not who you are replying to.

Anecdata, but my sister-in-law had 3 children, her first was at the same hospital I was born (in the Texas Medical Center), and he was a standard birth, the last 3 were at our small region hospital. With her second child after only an hour of labor they told her they HAD to do a C-Section, and to top it off, they only gave her 2 nights to recover from what is major surgery (first night being the night she gave birth). The reason for the remaining C-Section was that she "needed" a C-Section before.

I'm not saying that its so the doctor can go play golf or something personally repugnant like that, but that they are short staffed doctors, and a C-Section typically has no complications and they know how long it takes to get a baby out when they cut you open versus you taking up a bed that could be turned over to the next C-Section. There is an incentive to flip beds as often as possible.

Same here. They just got sick of waiting. Turns out private equity has optimised the birth process.

> The reason for the remaining C-Section was that she "needed" a C-Section before.

Yeah she probably had a vertical incision c-section, which clinically indicates a c-section for the next birth. You can read about it, the fibers heal better from a transverse incision.

That's all fine and good, but many patients can only have so many C-Sections without complications. It isn't universal, and maybe it comes down to the doctor that did the C-Section in the first place, but its an invasive procedure to optimize the time it takes to deliver and not (usually) to optimize the health of the baby and mother.

I'm all for medically necessary procedures, but here in America, so many procedures are not medically necessary, they are there for optimizing the bottom line of the for-profit medicine-industrial-complex.

It is not. My mother was forced out of a hospital once for not giving a Caesarean section. (The baby was fine throughout.)

And I had a college roommate (male, no children) who espoused the idea that making women give birth without the benefit of a Caesarean section was barbaric.

I've seen it first hand. Had to fight them off.

Far from last resort. How often it's used is based on location. Let me do the citation:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/c-section...

First is Mexico and Turkey with more than 50%! USA is 32%. Norway seems to be quite low with 16% as far as first world countries go.