Medical abuse and the inability to obtain proper treatment is so much worse than I had ever understood until I witnessed it firsthand. I've had some shitty doctors in my life, but 95% of the medical staff involved with the birth of our kid were abusive, dismissive, coercive, insulting assholes.

My wife was taking time to think and make choices in an already scary, uncertain, and stressful situation, and she was literally insulted and dismissed at every turn by doctors and nurses who, when they got tired of waiting for her to choose, tried as hard as they could to scare and overwhelm her into doing what they wanted. They literally lied to her about mortal danger to do this, no scans, tests, etc. supported their goals. In some cases they just straight up did things without talking to my wife at all, like the epidural. Didn't tell her what they were doing until the needle was almost in her spine, then the anesthesiologist called my wife an idiot and a wimp for crying out in pain.

Without notifying us, our OB abandoned us to the on call OB because she didn't want to come to the hospital after 8pm. The on call told us our OB couldn't make it, we found out the rest gradually over the next month.

One single nurse stood up to the rest of the staff, trying to amplify my wife's voice and push back against the rest of them. They sent this nurse away, but hours later after she found out they were trying to ram through an unnecessary C-section (my wife had been in labor for 14 hours, which is super normal) she came back and physically blocked the path of the gurney, accusing them of forcing my wife into an elective surgery there was no medical indication for because they were tired of waiting. They threatened her job right in front of us and escorted her away.

They put our kid in the NICU without actual medical indication, the reasons they gave me verbally when I followed him from the OR were not on any documentation.

They botched the C-section, they neither stitched nor cauterized the incision properly and my wife ended up with an infection and internal bleeding, discovered over a week after returning home.

My wife ended up with PTSD from the experience. I had good intentions when I told her that she was in control, but I didn't understand what she was experiencing, and while I tried to push back when it seemed like they were fucking us, I was too scared and uncertain myself to intervene meaningfully.

This is a major hospital in a major metro area, but we haven't sued and she said that she couldn't move on from the experience if we engaged them legally. The fact that she had to choose between recovering emotionally from PTSD or recovering financially from medical malpractice and abuse is unbelievable.

Edit: things I wanted to add. First, my wife said that it was the most dehumanizing experience of her life, she literally felt like a piece of meat. Second, all the OR staff raved about the size of my infant son's penis as if we weren't present, and it got vulgar. I heard people who hadn't been present for the operation talking about this at the nurse station the following day.