Reading this article was to me like déj vu. In the late 1950s, my late colleague Raoul Naroll concluded that more than 90 percent of the world’s cultures preferred the upright position for giving birth. In my own work with Martha Austin Garrison on Navajo birthing practices, we elicited many comments by older Navajos. Without exception, they ridiculed giving birth lying down. The most frequent comment was, “It takes a lot longer to give birth in the hospital.”
Oswald Werner Albuquerque, N.M.
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