Reply to Evelyn Muhlhan - another homebirth midwife bites the dust?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is not really about Evelyn, it's about reproductive rights, including where a woman has a right to give birth.

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This is a difficult question. One of the charges against her comes from a VBAC at home that resulted in rupture and infant death.

Should a woman be allowed to attempt a VBAC at home? I don't know. There is another party involved, a term baby. [/quote]

I'm sorry, but no, it's not a difficult question. You don't get to make decisions about my body in the interest of my baby. [/quote]

If you want to convince the many people who disagree with you, just stating your view is unlikely to do it. I'm pro-choice in many ways but a full term baby is not the mother's to dispose of as she sees fit. Maybe the science will show that home VBACs are safe enough that she gets to make the call. That's fine.

But let's say there was a condition for which homebirth led to infant death 20 percent of the time versus 1 percent of the time in a hospital.  The baby has enough rights that I would ask the government to forbid homebirth in that scenario.

Children are people who have rights the government protects. Parents get a lot of leeway, yes. Parents have the right to make risky calls. But above a certain risk level, the government intervenes. A full term baby is not an embryo, it is a person. [/quote]

What about the scenario where it is safer to have a baby a home?  This is true in the case of meconium aspiration, which is three times as likely to occur in a hospital setting than at home.  How come our government isn't taking up the cause and insisting that women who are risk for meconium aspiration deliver at home?  There are dozens of other interventions and complications that are much more likely to occur in a hospital setting, yet no one ever talks about the safety of homebirth.

The reality is that there is a massive political machine at work here.  Doctors, even when their protocols lead to greater problems or are not evidence-based, are championed as the ultimate life-saver and have enormous political, financial, and societal resources.  The bottom line is that I never want a doctors opinion for my health to supercede my right to decide which type of healthcare to pursue - for myself OR for my children.

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I'm the PP at 10:59. Thanks, PP, for saying the things that I didn't in my post.

The thing that I really hate about arguments like this usually, and the thing that relieves me about the way this one has gone, is that it almost always turns into a "rights of the unborn child" vs "rights of the mother" argument.  It becomes about one of those things trumping the other one, without a lot of conversation about evidence based medicine, evolving standards of care, etc. I think that the tragedies get played up in the media and our own collective mind to mean that's all home birth ever is - dangerous, irresponsible, ill advised. I know a lot of women who have had babies at home, and only one of those outcomes has been anywhere close to the frightening disasters described in this suit. Even that duo is fine now, 4 years later. I think it's too easy to pay attention only to the worst case scenario and to forget what the PP said, that most births result in positive outcomes for everyone, regardless of where they take place.[/quote]

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