The following I am snail mailing to Rep. Pat Miller, the Attorney General and probably a few other legislators in the Indiana state gov't.
Dear representative,
I have been dismayed to learn of the ‘nuclear attack’ on homebirth/midwifery that has just been requested by Shelby County prosecutors. Their request to shut down virtually all home midwifery activity in the state is a dramatic attack on personal liberty in a nation that once prided itself on the freedom of its citizens. It is also unsound policy no matter how you look at it.
1. Homebirth is legal in all 50 states. The effect of a Cease and Desist order would be to deny home birth mothers access to trained professionals who can attend to them and enhance the safety of the birth. This would elevate the risks faced by Indiana women – not reduce them!
2. Home birth with a Certified Professional Midwife is safe or safer than an equivalent hospital birth. This is demonstrated by studies such as “Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America” (BMJ 2005;330:1416 (18 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7505.1416) The study compared low risk pregnancies, at home and in hospital births. (No trained CPM will advise in or assist in a pregnancy with a known risk requiring medical intervention!)
3. At the same time, home birth leads to fewer invasive medical procedures, is more comfortable and less traumatic than hospital births. (See the study above and related studies.) Thus, coercing women into hospital births forces them to endure more trauma and higher rates of medically invasive procedures such as episiotomies and C-sections, which can impact their ability to delivery children in the future. We also have to consider factors such as the risk of infectious disease transmission for all involved in hospital deliveries.
4. The studies are no fluke, because CPMs are highly trained professionals experienced in home labor and delivery. Rather than harassing them, the medical community would do better to respect them and learn from them and try to match them in their skill and outcomes.
5. The case precipitating this crisis involved Jennifer Williams’ first stillbirth. Please note that mother in question had bad experiences with *hospital* miscarriages twice before (See http://www.shelbynews.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=36255&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=&S=1). This is the first death out of c. 1500 births for Jennifer, giving her a clearly superior record compared to national averages for hospital births. Logically, you should be threatening the shutdown of the birth ward of every hospital in the state each time a death occurs in a hospital, if this is what is driving this prosecution!
6. In an era of skyrocketing medical costs and an increasingly overburdened medical system, homebirth offers a way to dramatically reduce the burdens on hospitals and individuals. We pay around 10% of what a hospital birth costs for my wife’s home births, in addition to the safety and comfort advantages listed above. From a “consumer protection” standpoint, the choice here is clear!
7. Please understand the determination of the home birth community in your state. Banning midwives will not eliminate home birth, which remains legal. Many mothers, including my wife, feel driven from the institutional medical system by the corruption, malpractice and just generally poor service they have encountered. Others, such as the Indiana Amish community, are driven by deep personal convictions that you cannot overturn by edict. Banning midwifery will likely just drive it underground, when what you should be seeking is a reasonable means of efficiently regulating it – just as House Bill 1237 proposes.
8. Midwifery is legal in at least 35 states according to the Midwives Association of North America (MANA). Indiana is one of the few states that has a hostile profile towards this respected, age-old profession.
9. House Bill 1237 has been passed twice by the House only to be held up by Pat Miller in the senate. It is wrong to persecute CPM’s when they have been trying in good faith all along to rectify matters. There is something flagrantly absurd about lumping trained midwives in with arsonists, burglars and drug dealers in considering them all ‘felons.’
10. Finally, and most importantly, I have to appeal to what it means to be an American. Once, this was a land of freedom and personal responsibility. That heritage is slipping away, crushed by the Nanny State mentality. If midwifery must be regulated because it is “risky” then so must everything else under the sun, for everything has risk. The logical outcome is a Stalinist police state, with subjects (no longer citizens) constantly coerced just as their “experts” have told them to act. Let us retain what freedom we have. Please…
Words can’t really express for the fear and concern we have over this decision and the detrimental impact it could have on our families and those around us, but I’ve tried to give some of the reasons why in these points above. Please, let us make informed choices for ourselves rather than being coerced.
Hoping for my children’s future, and the safety of future births in my family,
Eric Blievernicht
You cost the medical establishment to much money.
The big hospitals out there see market share lost due to you. So they try to legally push you out of the race.
It has nothing to do with a woman’s or child’s health. It has all to do with charging $6000 or more for a birth at a hospital that in reality is a natural process where for the most part NOTHING needs done. If pregnancy were a "medical condition" the way some try to portray it, the human race would have gone extinct.
If you take 100% pregnant women and look at them closely enough you'd see that near 100% fall out of one statistical norm or the other. How many women really efface exactly according to some statistical average? How many really gain weight according to this average? How many really grow according to this average? If you look hard enough you could argue that near all woman have "troubled" pregnancies that need pills, epidurals, forceps, an IV and lots of other BS that the hospital can all charge for.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist. But the trend to push the Nurse Midwife out of the picture is a pure financial one. Statistically, most birthing centers beat the hospitals hands down while being ½ to cost or less!
http://allenbirthingcenter.com/ (That’s where my wife will deliver in a week)
If admitted to a hospital they will “push” on her an epidural, “demand” she don’t eat and drink, “require” and IV……… What they want is the perfect patient; One that can’t move or do anything except nod yes to the Gods in the white lab coats.
The best healthcare does not always require the highest price tag. What you see developing here with midwifery is a systemic problem of our whole medical establishment.
Americans pay the most for healthcare world wide. But we have a lower life expectancy than many other Western industrialized nations. We have kids that are not even vaccinated against Polio! If I had been poor and had gone to the Plano Tenant hospital, no doubt my wife would have gotten some vitamin pills and got sent home. Since I have a good insurance and have a decent income, they will try to milk the cow as much as possible. Is that good healthcare? Does spending a lot equal good care? Why is it that we have a HIGHER infant death mortality rate than most other Western industrialized nations? At the same time we have the HIGHEST C-section rates, pay the most and use the most medication while also performing the most intrusive and intervention on mothers. Think about that. I’m not making this up! The facts – all sources back me up on that.
Healthcare in America is “big business”. We spend more on healthcare then on defense. Actually near 3.25 times what we spend on defense we spend on healthcare. The Nurse Midwife, birthing centers etc offer something which threatens the economic base of the medical industry. You won’t find too many midwives that “push” an epidural. Where can the big pharmaceutical firm make its money in this picture? Where can the big Tenant hospital make its money?
Is there really a “medical need” to stay in a hospital two nights after a normal healthy birth? Maybe the medical establishment has a propensity to see everything as a “medical condition” which needs surgical intervention and medication? Maybe it’s a cultural issue? Either way, my wife and I both speak multiple languages, we both are educated and she has her masters. We don’t consider ourselves ignorant, but we are no elitist jerks either. Nonetheless, my wife does NOT want to deliver in this hospital in Plano because she knows that their will be this constant guiding hand above her which “pushes” her to be induced, have an epidural, pop the bag of water, strip the membrane, have pitosin, stick lots of probes and needles in every orifice and do whatever. They can’t “help themselves”. After all, that baby needs to be out before shift change.
“Labor and delivery” has become a racket. It’s become a place where big bucks are made relatively easily with a low risk. What’s happening here has nothing to do with a woman’s or child’s best health interests in mind anymore.