Mothers choose caesarean births 'for good medical reasons'

Women are having their baby by caesarean section because there are medical reasons for the procedure, such as breech births, not because they are "too posh to push", says a study in the British Medical Journal. Analysis of 621,000 births at 146 hospital trusts in England in 2008 found no evidence that women with low-risk pregnancies were asking for caesareans. The authors found the rate of caesareans performed at different hospitals varied from 14.9% to 32.1%, thanks to different medical teams' attitudes on abnormal or difficult labours. The national average is 24%.