The rally wasn't pushing natural birth versus medicated birth, or even hospital birth versus home birth. Instead, the point was to increase education about birth options.
"If I could tell you how many women have told me, 'If I would have known this, I would have never done that,'" said Dawn Thompson with improvingbirth.org. "It's a really unfortunate thing."
"For me, the opportunity to have a choice about the way that you want to birth your baby is just a human right," said Wendy Silvers with the Million Mamas Movement.
Dozens of parents, health care providers and advocates participated in the rally in downtown L.A. Monday morning. They joined those in more than 170 cities across the country and in Canada, Japan and Australia.
"We're seeing more induction rates, which leads to more C-section rates," said Kimme McGuire, a birth professional.
"Right now our C-section rate is around 35 percent, which is about 20 to 25 percent more than what the World Health Organization recommends as normal," said Adeola Adeseun, a birth rights attorney.
"It's really about women being capable of making their own decisions when they're given of all the information because that's currently what's lacking," said Thompson.
