You don't have to be trained and practicing in a field to know some things about it. Nobody should be making medical decisions solely on the advice of strangers on internet forums, but being a public defender doesn't automatically disqualify someone from being a credible source of sound medical information just like being a doctor doesn't automatically make a person credible.

After all, in my country we have a doctor telling people that their illnesses were caused by demon sperm and being on record saying that medical treatments come from alien DNA yet they're still allowed to keep their medical license and practice thanks to the Texas Medical Board.

It's possible that our public_defender is entirely wrong, but isn't better to attack the false claim than to attack a person or dismiss their opinions on the basis of their job title? Don't you suspect that you yourself have some useful information on things outside of your job description?

experts aren’t wizards

reasonable people can understand

— law - medicine - accounting - investing

if we leave all judgment to experts we won’t be able to do anything or even judge experts

always remember the doctor who barely graduated is still called a doctor…

My opinion isn't stupid, I have just considered and valued sources that you have disregarded. The ACOG is a trade group that supports medical intervention in birth. It doesn't make their contributions to research on the efficacy of medical intervention in birth irrelevant, but you should consider their contributions in the same light as Exxon's sponsored research into the environmental impacts of oil extraction.

There is no good reason to have a medical doctor attend every birth. Of course in a country with a 30% c-section rate, there is much more for doctors to do. I don't think that any credible source will defend 30% as an optimal rate of surgical intervention in birth, but feel free to rebut me.

C-sections are only "no worse" for the mother and baby if you only consider mortality. Let's also consider:

1) Mother-child bonding time in the first two hours after birth.

2) Inoculation of the baby to mother's flora in the birth canal.

3) Mother's ability to care for the baby while recovering from surgery.

4) Postpartum mental health of mother who has been denied natural birth.

"Scheduled c-sections outperform emergency c-sections in every metric tracked."

The comparison is natural birth to c-sections. Comparing scheduled c-sections to emergency c-sections is a ridiculous thing to track, go compare GP visits vs admission to emergency while you're at it.

I don't know about the other numbers, but my wife has had two scheduled c-sections and the recovery for both suuucked when compared to everyone we know that had natural birth.

Of course, the process of going through labor pains for many hours might make things even between the two...

What? c-sections are MUCH MUCH worse for the mother in every single metric including pain. C-section pain is longer and more severe than natural birth pain, and natural birth pain can be ameliorated which makes it even better - but even with no intervention at all natural birth pain is less than c-section pain.

If you are scheduling a c-section it means you are not trying for a natural birth and that means your outcome for the mother is strictly worse.