It s widely accepted, not only by obstetricians but also by midwives and home birth families, that not every birth unfolds perfectly. Medical intervention is essential in some cases. But to get to a meaningful statistic, it s necessary to look at pregnancy and labor outcomes. As the Joint Commission on Health Care stated in its 1999 report on midwives, there is no empirical evidence showing hospital birth to be safer than home birth. This means that midwives are successfully referring clients who need medical care, they are preventing some complications through the exceptional care they give to women, and they are managing other complications successfully at home or transporting clients to the hospital in a timely manner.
Families accept that pregnancy and birth are inherently risky to some degree.
We look to solid research to help us discern where and how we might minimize that risk. Another important point made by Dr. LeHew is that, at least in part, the alternative birth movement is a consumer reaction to paternalistic and mechanistic medical obstetrical practices which developed in this country early in the century. At the JCHC Midwifery subcommittee hearing in Newport News in July 1999, speakers in favor of legalizing CPMs included two registered nurses, four chiropractors, a retired obstetrician, a naval officer, and a rocket scientist from NASA Langley. It is profoundly disrespectful for the medical lobby to presume that they, rather than these parents, these families, should decide where a woman should give birth and who should be allowed to attend her. Paternalism becomes something more sinister when it is founded on assumptions which contradict known evidence.