Fighting a Losing Battle

The past few days I've come to realize that I am fighting a losing battle. I thought that my work as a natural Childbirth educator and labor doula was going to help with lowering the use of medication during labor and birth. I thought that it would help lower c-section rates. I thought that the purpose of my work was to help women fight what our society has turned birth into - a medical event - and hold their hand as they sit back and let nature take it's course. Apparently, I was wrong. Apparently, I am in the great minority of doulas who think this way. Apparently, I am narrow-minded and hold too high of a standard and will never have any clients in the area where we are moving.
Certainly I would never make a woman feel bad for receiving medication or for having a c-section. I understand that these things happen, and sometimes for a good purpose. But I don't think I'd be able to support a woman who held beliefs that were in complete contrast to mine. Who wanted drugs all the way, who wasn't even open to trying some natural approaches to working through labor.
If I were a post-partum doula, I'd have a real hard time going into a house of a family that was ingrained with Ezzoing or Baby Whispering their baby. I could not just stand by and support a mother who refused to respond to her baby's cries, who ignored her baby's needs. Sure, it's her right as a mother to parent her child as she sees fit, but my convictions would not allow me to help her implement that decision.
If I were a parenting support person, I could not go into someone's house and help them punitively parent their children, if that's the choice they had made. I would go in there with alternatives to spankings and time outs, and help to show that there is another way, a better way, a healthier way to parent.
Maybe I'm in the wrong field. I cannot just put my heart, my convictions aside and be excited and supportive of a decision that is against what I believe, what I advocate for. It would be wrong for me to share my strong beliefs with some while dropping those beliefs when I get paid to support someone who doesn't feel as I do.
Does it sound as if I'm judging? I hope not. I do not judge. I do not look down on a woman who choses medication for birth, who let's her baby "learn to soothe itself to sleep", or one who believes that spanking is the proper form of discipline for her children. I used to hold some of these beliefs myself, until I became aware of the truth. As I delved deeper into studies of the side effects of a medicated labor, crying it out and spanking, I soon discovered that I had been fed so many lies. I was following a path that had been layed out before me, not through my informed decisions, but by family, friends and doctors who were following tradition.
I'm one of those crazy childbirth ladies who writes to Congress to get policies changed. Who writes letters to newspaper editors, who signs petitions and peacefully assembles to protest certain hospital policies. I teach my students to be consumers of their births, to weigh the benefits and risks, to free themselves of fears, and past hang-ups, to be physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy for this important event. I show my students the studies that have been done on drug intake during labor and birth and how it affects the baby, the mom, breastfeeding, bonding, their lives. How could I teach this to my students one day and then turn around the next and say sure, lady, I will support you in your choice to be completely medicated from the time you feel your first contraction. I would be a hypocrite. Who would listen to me?
Is anybody even listening now?
My battle to change the way our society views birth is a losing battle. We can never win this. We can never change this attitude of the majority of obstetricians. We can never change the attitudes of mainstream pregnant women who go to these obstetricians because that's who their insurance company assigned them to. The rights of women. It's getting so mixed up. I thought we were fighting for the rights of women when I make the choice to see a midwife and birth at home, naturally, not having to fight ridiculous, tradition(not medically-)-based procedures. Man, this has my mind so jumbled, I can't even type out what I want to say. I can't even formulate how I feel.