The back part of a gun's barrel where ammunition is loaded, or the buttocks; also used in the term 'breech birth' when a baby is born feet-first instead of head-first.
From Old English brēc or brǽc, related to 'breeches' (pants); originally meant the back or rear of something.
The term 'breech birth' became famous because it's one of the few situations where modern medical intervention saves lives—before hospitals and cesarean sections, breech births often killed both mother and baby.
Obstetric terminology like 'breech presentation' carries embedded assumptions about 'normal' birth tied to medicalization that disproportionately affected poor and Black women. Language shapes treatment protocols.
Use clinical descriptors ('breech presentation') with acknowledgment that medical protocols have historically excluded women from decision-making in their own care.
["breech presentation","non-vertex presentation"]
Midwifery knowledge, historically stewarded by women, offered alternatives to pathologizing breech births; contemporary obstetrics increasingly recognizes this wisdom.
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