Bug's Mum, try reading some of Liebling's birth stories on here. And my emotional recovery (OK, a very long 3-year journey, eventually ending up with complaining to the hospital). I think birth rape is appropriate - and as for screaming about it, how many women report rape? Very few. Because of the emotional backlash of choosing to visit that pain again. I said no and yet still had things done to me I didn't want. But DH was OK with it, so that makes it all alright according to the health professionals at the time. (Which is why no doctor, midwife, nurse or DH is coming near me should I ever give birth again.) Also, rape implies a loss of power, not being heard, an assault on a very private and sensitive area of the body - try having a doctor shove his hand up there while I'm pushing and complaining that I'm too tense as he does it. I think birth rape covers that best.

As for vaccinations - people disagree. Wow. Vaccinated people can die of the diseases they think they are safe from, vaccinations don't always work and some cause more problems than they solve. Yet I still get Liebs vaccinated, albeit delayed vaccination (still within the approved time-frame). Why? Because overall they do more good than harm - the ones I choose to have done, at any rate. I don't get a chicken pox vaccine as I'm not Australian, wouldn't have given it to Liebs if I had the choice - and he could have died from it, age 3. I still stand by my decision - but would I feel the same if he had died? I don't give him every vaccination, and am against the HPV vaccine because of the marketting, but just because I have a foot in both camps doesn't mean I didn't inform myself of my decisions nor does it mean I am doing a bad thing from either perspective.

I do think that some health professionals see the greater good of vaccinations as more important than a parent's worries, but that happens in every profession about something. Just as some anti-vax people willingly blind themselves to any benefit of vaccination. Not everyone, but the few extremes give everyone a bad name.