Free Republic

This week, the New Orleans City Council voted 6-0 to ask the city's police and prosecutors not to use municipal resources to enforce the state's abortion ban. Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson hailed the Council's action, saying "our community elected me to bring progressive change. The babies the state law wants to save are unwanted intruders into the lives of the birthing persons who are trying to dispose of them. Using deadly force against these intruders was authorized by the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision. I am going to enforce that decision as long as I am the...

Shantell Jones gave birth in an ambulance parked on the side of a Connecticut highway. Even though she lived six blocks away from a hospital, the emergency vehicle had to drive to another one about 30 minutes away. The closer medical center, Windham Hospital, discontinued labor and delivery services last year and is working to permanently cease childbirth services after “years of declining births and recruitment challenges,” its operator, Hartford HealthCare, has said. But medical and public health experts say the step could potentially put pregnant women at risk if they don't have immediate access to medical attention. Losing obstetrics...

With hospital births becoming increasingly unattractive as a result of COVID-19 protocols, many women are beginning to consider home births as an alternative. When I decided to have my third baby at home, I did so because I felt that a home birth with an experienced midwife would be the safest place for labor and delivery. My first two children were born in a large, Boston teaching hospital, and medical interventions there caused complications for me. My last two children were born at home, on their own time, with no interventions and no complications. You can read more about my...

A British teenager went to bed with a headache, fell into a coma and woke up four days later — after unknowingly giving birth to a surprise baby. Ebony Stevenson, 18, had no idea she was pregnant, and after going to bed feeling sick on Dec. 2, 2018, she was rushed to the hospital and placed in an induced coma before waking up on Dec. 6 having had a baby girl. “Meeting my baby was so surreal. It felt like an out-of-body experience,” Stevenson said. “I worried I wouldn’t bond with my daughter because I had no time to get...

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County is planning a crackdown on makeshift maternity wards where mothers from other countries stay while giving birth so their children will be U.S. citizens. The county has received 60 complaints about such facilities in the past month, according to a report by the Planning Department submitted to the Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Times reported. That compared with just 15 complaints in the previous five years. The surge might be due to publicity over the closure of a house in Chino Hills that authorities contended had been used to house as many as...

Ralph and Wynona Passow bought their first camels a decade ago to rid their farm of weeds. The camel herd has grown to more than 30.Lanky legs and neck sprawled too far forward, then too far backward. That black, furry newborn was going to stand and nurse somehow, Passow decided. The mother camel blinked long, dreamy eyelashes and watched carefully as Passow coaxed the big baby to the mother's side. "The females are lovely," Ralph Passow said, watching his wife try to turn the baby toward the patient mother. "But the male camels will kill you." About 30 minutes earlier,...