The medical lobby's misinformation campaign, deliberate or not, is a tremendous disservice to the hundreds of Virginia families who choose homebirth. We are making an informed, legal choice to have our babies at home. We simply want to be able to hire a midwife to make that choice as safe as it can be. We especially oppose allowing them to do this in the most dangerous place the home. Not one of any of these ten studies that I reviewed makes any recommendations to license lay non-medically educated midwives to do deliveries especially in the home.
Home birth is a controversial issue.
Debate about the safety of home births focuses on the risk of preventable perinatal mortality and morbidity and on the broader issue of appropriate screening and referral. Questions are always raised about the ability to predict which women can safely give birth at home and about the risk of unforeseen complications that require emergency transport to the hospital. The Virginia Health Department recently presented a study showing about a 10 percent incidence of unanticipated medical emergencies, which arose in low risk pregnancies. These include meconium and fetal distress, breech presentation, cephalopelvic disproportion, hemorrhaging complications, umbilical cord prolapse, and seizures. This means that when some events occur in labor, they cannot be predicted in advance and a medically trained person in the hospital Labor and Delivery environment needs to be present to take care of the emergency.