Director: Abby Epstein
Producers: Abby Epstein, Paulo Netto, Amy Slotnick
Starring: Ricki Lake
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running time: 87 min

Birth. Women who have children have described it as one of if not the most important moment in their lives but can the same be said for women giving birth in North America today? With millions of births every year, one would expect that the so-called “business of being born” is a fairly standard, straightforward procedure but after seeing The Business of Being Born, I can’t help but question the realities of giving birth in America.

A passion project for talk show host and actress/producer Ricki Lake, the film came out of research she conducted while prepping for her second birth. After going through the hospital process for the birth of her first child, she came to realize that things didn’t go according to her initial plan of ‘natural birth’. Under the watchful eye of nurses and doctors and the pressure of popping out a baby, she was talked into things she didn’t initially consider and the result was a feeling of having been numb for most of the birth. For some women that may be alright but for others, women who want to feel in control and want to know what’s going on during the most important moment of their lives, this is a huge problem and Lake wasn’t ready to go through it all a second time. Her research revealed that the current state of health care in America, and I assume Canada, doesn’t generally allow for a ‘natural birth’.

The numbers are staggering: while in Europe and Japan midwives attend 70% of births, only 1% attend births in the US. Since the 1950s, midwives have slowly been removed from the birthing process in the US and replaced with drugs and doctors who are on a schedule and working within the confines insurance companies and possible lawsuits. To make matters worse, you have the rise of scheduled cesections in which women schedule in giving birth alongside having their hair cut and nails done and the fact that these sorts of things are taking place in the lives of movie and pop stars makes them that much more acceptable and we tend to overlook the fact that a cesection is considered major surgery. Filmmaker Abby Epstein makes a point of noting that hospitals are a sometimes necessary part of giving birth, especially for high-risk pregnancies or in the case of something going wrong but the facts speak for themselves and most women have perfectly normal births that don’t require doctor intervention.

One could write entire papers and still not touch on the various facts, figures and questions raised by the film and in and of itself, The Business of Being Born is neither the be-all-end-all of the discussion nor does it claim to offer all of the answers instead, it opens the door to discussion of an integral part of humanity: birth. By interviewing health specialists, authors, and prominent midwives, Epstein and Lake show that there is much more to giving birth than many women are aware of and the film does a fair job of showing both sides of the spectrum. Epstein and Lake have an obvious agenda at play, namely raising awareness for natural births, but they refrain from making hospitals, doctors and drugs out to be “the bad guys” choosing instead to let the women speak for themselves by sharing their own experiences, though in all honesty, some of the doctors interviewed make themselves look like inconsiderate, uncaring individuals so they do a good job of making themselves out in a negative light.

Shortly after seeing the film, I commented that it is a must see film for all women and that statement is even more accurate now that the film has sunk than it was the moment I walked out of it. The Business of Being Born isn’t just a film – it’s a statement: women need to be made aware of their options. This documentary is a good starting step in the right direction.

Links:
IMDb profile
Official Site
Flixster Profile for The Business of Being Born