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Cash-strapped hospitals are banning hundreds of women from having a caesarean birth, it emerged today.
有消息稱，由于醫院資金緊張，英國成百上千位孕婦被禁止剖腹產子。
A number of NHS trusts have said they will only give the go-ahead for a c-section if the woman's health would be put at risk by a natural birth. They have launched the crackdown on women who are 'too posh to push' – saying it wastes millions of pounds of NHS money every year.
英國國民衛生服務體系（NHS）基金會所轄的多家醫療機構表示，只有當孕婦順產面臨危險時，才會允許剖腹產。這對那些號稱“分娩用力不時髦”的孕婦們是個不小的打擊。據稱，剖腹產每年會浪費掉NHS上百萬英鎊的資金。
Most hospitals already discourage women from having c-sections by outlining the potential risks to both mother and baby.
大多數醫院已經勸孕婦們不要進行剖腹產，向她們描繪出剖腹產對母嬰的潛在風險。
But now some trusts are going further by ruling them out on financial rather than medical grounds – meaning it will be even harder for women to get a caesarean on the Health Service. Some mothers have attacked the restrictions, saying it should be a woman's right to choose how their baby is born.
但如今，不少基金會成員醫院出于經濟原因，而不是醫療原因下了剖腹產禁令，這意味著英國女性想在NHS體系內進行剖腹產更困難了。一些媽媽們抨擊了這一禁令，稱怎么生寶寶是女人的權利。
One quarter of all births in the UK are now by caesarean section, up from just 9 percent in 1980, despite a campaign by the World Health Organisation which believes there is no justification for any country having a rate exceeding 15 percent.
英國剖腹產的比例目前是四分之一，而1980年這一比例僅有9%。世界衛生組織發起的一項活動稱，任何國家的剖腹產率高于15%都是不合理的。
A planned caesarean costs around £2,600 – much more than the £1,200 cost of a natural birth without complications; taking money from strained NHS budgets away from other priorities such as heart disease and cancer.
一次有計劃的剖腹產費用大約在2600英鎊左右，而順產只需1200英鎊，要低得多，而且不會引起并發癥。NHS的預算本來就捉襟見肘，錢應該優先用于治療心臟病、癌癥等疾病。
Economists estimate that a drop of 1 percent in the proportion of women having the surgery would save the NHS some £5.6million a year.
經濟學家估計，剖腹產率每下降1個百分點，NHS每年就可以節省560萬英鎊。
