Women are having their baby by caesarean section because there are medical reasons for the procedure, such as breech births, not because they are "too posh to push", says a study in the British Medical Journal.

Analysis of 621,000 births at 146 hospital trusts in England in 2008 found no evidence that women with low-risk pregnancies were asking for caesareans.

The authors found the rate of caesareans performed at different hospitals varied from 14.9% to 32.1%, thanks to different medical teams' attitudes on abnormal or difficult labours. The national average is 24%.