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The saddest of the stories that inspired me to look for principles, rather than rules. It's from 1987, or perhaps early 1988.

When Kirby was a baby, I was working with moms who had had a cesarean and wanted to (even if illegally) have a home birth or a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). Part of that work was hearing people's very sad stories.

A mom had been at the air force hospital here (in Albuquerque), on base, and was delivered (by cesarean) of stillborn conjoined twins. Because it happened quickly, and it was a cesarean, they had not shaved her pubic area. Because it was a military hospital and the chart said they MUST do that, they shaved her, after the birth, while she was in pain and grief, for no good reason on earth except that the rules said they would.