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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So, what's a "term" baby? 37 weeks? Under your logic, babies could be allowed to be born at home at 36 weeks and 6 days then? That would make sense? Or would they have the "right" to hospital care at earlier points of gestation? If so, how early are you suggesting we give fetuses these "rights"? Where do you draw the line? Conception? Potential for conception? Oral contraceptives should therefore be illegal because babies have the "right" to potentially be born, but only in hospitals, huh?

Again, this is about women's rights. Stripping them of options and making certain things "illegal" because of the opinions (read: pocketbooks) of obstetricians is insane. The woman should be the only decider when it comes to decisions about her reproductive health, whether she wants to give birth with an OB or if she wants her mom to catch the baby in the comfort of her own bedroom. If you start giving "term babies" the "right" to a hospital birth, you're going down a slippery slope.[/quote]

This continuum of reproductive rights, to include complete control from the moment of conception to a completed birth, is not necessary.

A woman's right to an abortion involves an overt, intentional act to end the life of her child.  A woman's right to birth as she so chooses involves the sanctity of a bodily function, which is not a medical procedure, and always involves an uncontrollable degree of risk.

So a woman who pays a doctor to deliver her full term baby feet first and sever its spinal cord before the head is delivered is intentionally and overtly participating in a series of actions that will definitely result in a dead baby.  In contrast, a woman who pays a doctor to deliver her full term baby feet first, whose head then is not delivered quickly enough and who dies, has NOT intentionally caused the death of her child.

Abortion is a deliberate action that intends the death of a child.  Birth is an involuntary action that intends the life of a child, but cannot guarantee it under any circumstances, with any attendant, in any location.

So a mother who delivers in her bathtub at home and leaves her baby underwater to drown because she intends for the child to die is a murderer, while a mother who has a precipitous labor and delivers unattended and does not clear her newborn's airways effectively does not intend for the child to die and is the tragic victim of an accident.

The book Pushed also attempted to link the right to abort with the right to birth, but the link does not hold. Women can advocate for birth choice while respecting the personhood of the child.[/quote]

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