Publishers Weekly
★ 05/13/2024
This excellent debut investigation from Somerstein, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, explores the history of and controversies surrounding the C-section. She explains that the operation emerged in the 500s and was usually performed on “dead or dying women in an effort to save,” or at least baptize, their babies, few of whom survived. The operation was still considered controversial for imperiling mothers’ lives in the 1800s, when American physicians began testing how to reduce its mortality rate by experimenting on enslaved Black women, who received no anesthesia and were said to “not feel pain as deeply as civilized, white women.” C-sections became safer by the end of the century and doctors started marketing them to upper-class white women, who “were believed to be delicate and constitutionally unable to withstand” labor pains. Today, C-sections comprise about one in three births in the U.S., despite research showing they’re 80% more likely than vaginal births to cause serious complications. According to Somerstein, hospitals overuse the procedure because it’s faster and allows more patients to be seen (and charged) per day. The damning history highlights how sexism and racism have shaped women’s healthcare for centuries, and Somerstein includes her own harrowing account of having an unplanned C-section while insufficiently anesthetized, an experience that left her with PTSD. This is a must-read. Agent: Veronica Goldstein, Fletcher & Company. (June)
author of Like a Mother Angela Garbes
Somerstein looks directly into our bodies and body politic, revealing the gender and racial power dynamics that make the C-section America’s most common surgery. Rigorously and lovingly reported, Invisible Labor is a gift, both long overdue and right on time.”
From the Publisher
A decade after my first C-section, Invisible Labor helped me process wounds I thought were healed. Rachel Somerstein looks directly into our bodies and body politic, revealing the gender and racial power dynamics that make the C-section America’s most common surgery. Rigorously and lovingly reported, Invisible Labor is a gift, both long overdue and right on time.” — Angela Garbes, author of Like a Mother and Essential Labor
“Somerstein lifts the surgical drape on the cesarean and explores what it really is, what it has meant for mothers, and how it has been weaponized. The operation affects women most deeply, physically and psychologically, but it ripples out in ways that the ever-expanding literature on modern maternity care has not fully examined and that belie the hidden bikini scar. With fascinating medical history, trenchant cultural analysis, and unflinching personal testimony, Invisible Labor is an important, accessible contribution.” — Jennifer Block, journalist and author of Everything Below the Waist and Pushed
“Rachel Somerstein’s Invisible Labor is astonishing for parents—like me—who never even thought to ask questions about the most important experience of their lives. She has done that rare thing that the very best books do: she has made the unseen seen. And if there’s any justice in this world, this book will change systems.” — Rachel Louise Snyder, author of Women We Buried, Women We Burned and No Visible Bruises
“A sharp account of an agonizing experience of childbirth. . . . The author’s anger over that traumatic experience infuses her investigation of the medical, social, and cultural history of C-sections and, more broadly, of a medical system that denies pregnant women’s autonomy and discredits or ignores women’s pain. . . . [Somerstein] draws on considerable research. . . . A hard-hitting critique of a persistent problem.” — Kirkus
“[E]xcellent . . . .The damning history highlights how sexism and racism have shaped women’s healthcare for centuries. . . .This is a must-read.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A sobering and deeply interesting look at the history of and debate around C-sections. . . . A provocative and well-researched book. . . . Invisible Labor also makes clear that we still have a long way to go in adequately supporting women’s health, and therefore, it is of value to us all.” — BookPage
“[Somerstein’s] expertise as a journalist shines . . . . [A] superb book . . . . persuasive and riveting.” — Science
“This inciting, empowering book shows the clear need not just to improve women’s access to health care but also to shift the paradigm about the restrictions placed on reproductive rights.” — Library Journal (starred review)
Kirkus Reviews
2024-04-02
A sharp account of an agonizing experience of childbirth.
Journalist Somerstein makes her book debut with a raw chronicle of the birth of her first child, which culminated in an unplanned Cesarean section. Because anesthesia failed, she suffered horrifically searing pain and a protracted period of healing. She also suffered severe emotional trauma, ending up with lifelong PTSD—a response, she learned, that affects nearly one in five women who give birth. The author’s anger over that traumatic experience infuses her investigation of the medical, social, and cultural history of C-sections and, more broadly, of a medical system that denies pregnant women’s autonomy and discredits or ignores women’s pain. C-sections, she reports, have become the most common operation in the world, accounting for 31.8% of births in the U.S. Furthermore, “Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Asian women are disproportionately more likely than whites to have C-sections.” First developed on dead or dying women, with the aim of saving either the fetus or the mother, C-section technique in the U.S. was honed on enslaved people and, during a wave of eugenics, on women deemed unfit to bear more children. Somerstein sees the current uptick in C-sections as evidence of physician hubris and the rampant medicalization of childbirth, including an increased reliance on technology such as electronic fetal monitoring and ultrasounds. The author also discovered that hospitals are incentivized to promote technological responses to childbirth “because these are the kinds of care that insurance companies reward.” If midwives were more fully integrated into childbirth care, as Somerstein advocates, the rate of C-sections likely would be diminished. The author draws on considerable research, including interviews “with midwives, physicians, sociologists, historians, doulas, therapists, and other parents”—conversations, she writes, that “helped me to better understand how what happened to me could have happened.”
A hard-hitting critique of a persistent problem.
