The american way of birth.

Jessica Mitford (1915-1996) conducts a brisk review of current American attitudes to pregnancy and childbirth, from birth among the dolphins to high-tech management in luxurious surroundings. Interspersed with astringent comments about her own experiences of childbirth in the 1940s, this light-hearted programme takes a more serious turn in its revelation that home births in California, attended by midwives, are illegal and that midwives who attend them are liable to extreme police harassment and to prosecution.