Another nasty article was published trying to smear home birth, with no factual basis whatsoever, just opinions propped up with a few poorly designed studies that have been denounced as faulty by every serious researcher who has examined them. In other words, the article “uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts – for support rather than for illumination.” {~Andrew Lang} All of the well-designed studies have shown the very opposite, that home birth is just as safe (same or lower mortality) and offers a great reduction in other forms of harm (lower morbidity) from interventions.

An excellent and well-researched response was written by Wendy Gordon, LM CPM MPH. It can be found here, or read as a pdf suitable for printing here. Every time there is a baseless attack against home birth and midwifery care, intelligent life steps up with the truth, and in the end they might as well have taken out a 2-page ad sponsoring home birth instead of trying to discredit it. As Gandi said: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Those who irrationally attempt to claim that home birth with trained midwives is dangerous, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, actually do the home birth midwives a great favor. Speaking for myself: people who are gullible or fearful enough to believe such drivel are probably not going to be the kind of questioning, thinking, responsible, intelligent, caring parents that I personally prefer to have as clients! Those deceptive tactics are just as insulting to parents as they are to good midwives, and drive even more people to seek care from someone who does not come from a profession which habitually lies to them about other types of care providers.

When will these ACOG hit-men learn that lesson, and focus on improving their own outcomes instead of trying so unsuccessfully to lie about ours? Then perhaps they would be professionally secure enough to no longer feel the need to resort to this type of immature tactics. We can hope.