Cesareans account for almost one-third of U.S. births. Yet they are still an often misunderstood way to give birth—hidden behind the door of the operating room, an experience from which parents can emerge bewildered and profoundly unsupported. Invisible, in a sense.

From that idea comes a new book out today by Rachel Somerstein investigating surgical birth: Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section.

Somerstein, a journalist and professor at State University of New York at New Paltz, had PTSD from her own cesarean birth in 2016. Not only did she feel dismissed by the people caring for her during labor, but the anesthesia did not work during surgery—her searing pain continued even after she screamed for medical staff to stop.

Somerstein’s own experience informs and colors her book, but her important exploration into surgical birth goes well beyond the personal. Examining everything from the history of obstetrics to the financialization of health care to the way individualism impacts both our ideals and experiences of childbirth, Invisible Labor truly gets at the multiverse of factors that make up cesarean birth in the United States. C-sections are individual and systemic, a birth and a surgery, a monumental life experience and a common medical procedure.

Rewire News Group chatted with Somerstein about cesareans and reproductive choice, how to bring community back into birth, and who she hopes reads her book.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Rewire News Group: The impetus for Invisible Labor was your own traumatic cesarean, but your book covers a ton of history, culture, and context that goes well beyond your own experience. How did you get to the vast cultural history that this book ended up being?

Rachel Somerstein: C-sections are the most common operation in the world, and they are so undertalked about in our culture. As I continued to research and report for this book, I basically found that c-sections are a terrific lens through which to look at American society. We try to understand why we do so many of them. We try to understand why, for instance, Black women are more likely to have them. There are all of these aspects that include history, economics, sexism, racism, and more. It’s like turning over a stone. And you see, oh wait, there’s a whole series of connections there with aspects of American culture. Everything related to it is all so complex and........

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