Color me skeptical

The number of elective C-sections is supposedly up. There may be something I'm missing here, but I'm skeptical. Why would any woman choose to deliver in a way that's more invasive, more dangerous, leaves scars, is more painful, and is more expensive?
And who are these doctors that don't spell this out for them?
The woman in this story claims that she elected to have a C-section because she didn't want to go through labor, I'm guessing because she was afraid of the pain. But that seems ill-informed to me, considering the C-sections are painful in and of themselves and they take longer to recover from.
I don't know. Maybe she's watched too much TV, where labor is always shown as this incredibly painful experience that turns ordinary women into screeching harpies, but where surgery is a lark that takes mere minutes to bounce back from, at least according to the "Plastic surgery is great!" shows.
But I'm sure there's something I'm missing here. Anyone have an idea what I'm missing?