To Stay or Not to Stay? That is the Question

Abstract

In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said that childbirth was “a woman's battleground.” That statement is even more accurate today as women organize to make their voices heard in the offices of government and the boardrooms of insurance companies. How did the most joyous and fundamental of nature's events become the center of such heated controversy?When the British first settled in America, childbirth was the domain of female attendants in the home. It was not until the 1920s that delivery in the hospital became fashionable. The specter of puerperal fever, associated with maternity hospitals in the 19th century, had . . .