When healthy women are supported this way, 95% give birth vaginally, with hardly any intervention.
And yet, the American Medical Association doesn't see the point. Yesterday at its annual meeting it adopted a policy written by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists against "home deliveries" and in support of legislation "that helps ensure safe deliveries and healthy babies by acknowledging that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital" or accredited birth center.
"There ought to be a law!" cry the doctors.
The trouble is, they have no evidence to back up their safety claims. In fact, the largest and most rigorous study of home birth internationally to date found that among 5,000 healthy, "low-risk" women, babies were born just as safely at home under a midwife's care as in the hospital. And not only that, the study, like many before it, found that the women actually fared better at home, with far fewer interventions like labor induction, cesarean section, and episiotomy (taking scissors to the vagina, a practice that according to the research should be obsolete but is still performed on one-third of women who give birth vaginally).
Which is why the American Public Health Association and the American College of Nurse Midwives support women choosing home birth. The British OB/GYNs have read the research, too, and have this to say: "There is no reason why home birth should not be offered to women at low risk of complications... it may confer considerable benefits for them and their families. There is ample evidence showing that labouring at home increases a woman's likelihood of a birth that is both satisfying and safe..."
The other trouble with the American MDs is that they seem to have lost all respect for women's civil rights, indeed for the U.S. Constitution -- the right to privacy, to bodily integrity, and the right of every adult to determine her own health care. The "father knows best" legislation they are promoting could indeed be used to criminally prosecute women who choose home birth, say, by equating it with child abuse.
Research evidence be damned, the doctors want to mandate you to go to the hospital. They don't want you to have a choice.
We think they're spooked. The cesarean rate is rising, celebrities are publicizing their home births (the initial wording of the AMA resolution actually took aim at Ricki for publicizing her home birth on the Today Show!), people are reading Pushed and watching The Business of Being Born, and there's a nationwide legislative "push" to license certified professional midwives in all states (The AMA is against that, too, by the way).
The docs are on the defensive.
After all, birth is big business -- it's in fact the most common reason for a woman to be admitted to the hospital. And if more women start giving birth outside of it, who will get paid? Not doctors and not hospitals.
"The AMA supports a woman's right to make an informed decision regarding her delivery and to choose her health care provider," the group said in a statement. But if it really supported women's choices it wouldn't adopt a policy condemning home birth and midwives.
Because if U.S. women are to have real birth choices, everybody needs to be working together to provide them, not waging turf wars at their expense.
Way to go girl!
Proof positive that collectivist efforts to use the coercive power of the state to grab your wallet begins from day 1!
I can imagine why not, but it's not my decision because I'm not the one in labor. It's also not the AMA's decision or the government's decision. This is one of many powers not enumerated in the Constitution that is reserved to the people - and Ricki Lake and all other women have an absolute right to make that decision for themselves
Sure they can give birth at home. BUT!! If anything goes wrong don’t let them show up at the hospital and then sue the doctor because he doesn’t get a good result. With this choice comes responsibility.
Up to and including the members of the “Greatest Generation” most were born at home. GTH AMA>
You go girl!
My wife has done homebirth with all 3 of our kids (and I ended up delivering the 2nd myself - the midwife was 2 hours away and Lydia came in 50 minutes). Like you say, it is safe or safer than the hospital environment for low-risk pregnancies.
The corruption and incompetence we’ve seen in the socialist medical system appalls us, and it’s also appalling that our midwives are operating in an essentially illegal fashion because the truly criminal institutional medical system wants to keep the revenue stream for births under their control. But with the effort to nationalize healthcare, the black market medical services we’re coming to rely on are going to be the services of choice for a lot more people in the future.
Why not???
Because it might get to be a problem when they decide to implant RFID chips in all babies at birth.
I quit doing OB after 16 years this past October and part of the reason was b/c of nurse mid-wifes. I have no problem if someone wants to have the birth at home with the dog watching over them but I have a BIG problem being responsible when they coming running to the hospital when something goes wrong and thrown into my lap at the last second. I know nothing about the pregnancy and most of the time no much pre-natal care was done. I will not be put in that situation again. Enough was enough.
Not only should we have our babies at home, we should NOT register them with the government. No S.S. card. Home school them and teach them to work off the books.
In England they are encouraging this, no? Keep them out of the hospital and away from expensive liability lawsuits from the John Edwards’ of this world?