NATURAL LOVE: A Parody

25 pages, $5

What would it be like to make love in the hospital, under the conditions which now prevail for childbirth? In this fictional account, newlyweds Kate and Sam take a class in "prepared love," and are admitted to the hospital's "natural love room." But many intrusions by staff and the use of monitoring devices cause things to go awry and their love must be mechanically resolved.

Natural Love is a funny and provocative parody on the interface between nature and technology. Also included is an "Afterward" and references on the relation between childbirth and sexuality.

Natural Love was chosen for inclusion in Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots, edited by anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Routledge in 1998.

I hear often from people who are using Cyborg Babies in their classes. The students universally love your chapter (Natural Love), as I knew they would.
Robbie Davis-Floyd, editor of Cyborg Babies and author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage

Comments from Readers

I am an American living in Denmark, and I recently read your great fable on natural love in Davis-Floyd's "Cyborg Babies." What an amazing story! I love writing about contemporary ideas and mores in this manner, exposing them through fables, as I find this shines an extraordinary light - your story hit right home!

I spend a lot of my free time working in the Danish birthing lobby, trying to counteract cutbacks and centralisation and the continuous erosion of maternity services in Denmark. I am SO tempted to see if I can translate your story into Danish and put it on our website or publish it in our newsletter. Thank you again for your wonderful story!

-Kaaren Maclean

After the really great experience I had giving birth to my son at home three years ago, I decided to try to help get more information out. I joined Friends of Homebirth here in Oakland but now I am not able to attend amymore. Still, when I meet pregnant women I make a point of letting them know their options. I'm enclosing $22. Please send me as many copies of Natural Love as that will cover with postage and all. It is really the best, to-the-point, very funny, very honest, deeply personal argument for home birth that I have found and I want to share it.
-Bonne Meike, Oakland, CA

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Reviews


Enlightening, creepy and hilarious.
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale
Powerful, riotously funny, and scathing.
Karen Ehrlich, midwife and former Board Member of the California Association of Midwives
Natural Love had me rolling on the floor with laughter and tears of sadness.
Esther Zorn, former Director of the Cesarean Prevention Movement
Brilliant, hilarious and blood-curdling.
The Compleat Mother magazine, Canada