This article examines feminism's role in cesarean sections, revealing how politics influences personal birth choices.
Should birthing people be able to choose to have cesarean sections for personal (nonmedical) reasons? In 2006, Katherine Beckett considered the right to choose cesareans in relation to three different waves of feminist activism. This article revisits Beckett’s questions and asks: Where are we now? While feminist birth politics has shifted, a revised feminist politics of elective cesarean sections is needed. This article offers two conceptual tools: (1) destabilizing the happy–natural nexus and (2) thinking birth as work. These are offered as points of friction with which to think against normative framings of the choice to have a cesarean section.
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Rachelle Chadwick (2025) studied this question.
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