ACOG's "strategic plan"

From ACOG’s “strategic plan”

http://www.acog.org/from_home/ACOGStrategicPlan.pdf

ACOG will advocate for women’s health by promoting:

• Patient safety and confidentiality initiatives, including integration of IM/IT

‘Patient safety’? Really? So you’re promoting major abdominal surgery as a means to ‘patient safety’?

• Access to medical care

As long as the patient agrees to the type/kind/duration of medical care you push on her though, right?

• Women’s reproductive rights

Except the right to choose type of care provider (midwife, OB, self), place of birth (home, birth center, hospital) or method of birth (vaginal or vbac… of course we are always free to choose a c-section for any ol’ reason).

• Equity, nondiscrimination and cultural sensitivity

Is that why the cesarean rate in minority communities is growing at such a rapid rate?

• Partnerships and alliances with women, women’s groups, and others interested in women’s health

Midwives are “women’s groups” and I am a woman and an “other” interested in women’s health. Yet instead of partnering with us you mock us and call us fools for seeking the kind of care we feel is safe and appropriate for our needs and our families.

• Advocacy education and training

Exactly what does this “education and training” consist of? Do you offer classes and pamphlets on “How to Bully a Patient into a Cesarean” and “Top 5 most proven ways to make a mother feel that she’s going to kill her baby”?

• Research, research funding, and evidence-based practice

First of all, you skew the findings in your “research” and second, if you truly practiced “evidence-based” care the cesarean rate in this country would not be over 30%.

• Patient and public education

Education? I think the word you’re looking for is “indoctrination”. Or perhaps brainwashing.

• Public health and global outreach

Oh, no! We need to save the world from ACOG’s “global outreach”. If we don’t, they’ll be slicing women from here to Timbuktu!