I don't necessarily agree with you here. We have a responsibility to inform our docs if they ask us to do something blatantly outside our protocol or scope of practice. How many residents do we get on the phone/radio who are just beginning their ED time and they give us orders for meds that are outside our protocols? It's happen to me a bunch of time and it's our duty to inform them that violates protocol.
That is a "systems" problem. If residents are giving orders then your EMS Director is not acting responsible for allowing them to do so. They again, are acting under his/her control as chief medical director, acting as a liaison.
If there were not "advances" we still would have to call for IV's... in which I remember the
"mother may I"days" of calling for all IV's, medications, etc. Especially such far radical procedures such as chest decompression, all now considered standard procedures. Yes, C-sections is radical, but so were crichs, even intubations at one time.
That being said, I still think if delivering that baby was my absolute only choice in saving it, that I would always err on the side of life. These guys are hero's and I was saddened to hear someone on here say that they lost their state certs for it. That was a bit extreme...maybe a suspension, but not a removal. Of course, how would they have been talked up or down if the C-section would have turned out differently and the baby didn't live. They'd likely have been reviled instead of heroes.
I agree, it took big gonads or big ovum's to perform such

.. Something, truthfully, I do not know I would attempt. During the bombing event, I had a pregnant female firefighters wanted me to attempt to perform a C-section on. I refused, due to the time delay, severity of injuries to the mother.
One only has up to 8 minutes to perform a C-section without damage to the fetus. If the mother was dead, she is now only a corpse.. studies have shown drastically poor outcomes with CPR to fetus. I have assisted physicians in emergency cesarean in traumatic codes, not a pretty site.
Hopefully, the child will survive. My hypothesis would be that the mother might have had a cerebral aneurysm. Unfortunately, this is not a uncommon event. I have seen one rupture during bearing down, and was a tragic site, as we had to manually compress the child out again not a site I want to see or do again.
Again, my hat is off to those medics that actually went above and beyond. I am sure they are receiving both praises and criticism from peers.
R/r 911