Pregnancy Articles

Home birth with a midwife is a no-brainer -- government statistics since statistical compilation began a century ago show the superiority of non-medical 

midwife-attended home birth. Yet, a government license does not ensure competence or safety � licensure is about limiting and controlling who can give health care information. For example, the hypocrisy of this licensure myth is obvious in the choice of �expert witness� chosen by the Lake County Illinois State�s Attorney for a recent home birth midwife case. Tabora v. Gottlieb Mem. Hosp., No. 92 C 8179, 1996 WL 563709 (N.D. Ill.) (explaining that a woman died from a hemorrhage following a cesarean section because her obstetrician refused to acknowledge her desperate condition due to his prejudice against the Asian anesthesiologist). The �expert� continued as an instructor for medical students and his Illinois license is pristine. State licensure encourages a false sense of security and denies the public necessary information about the true qualifications of practitioners.

ACOG�s (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) Wisconsin position paper and urgings claiming home birth to be unsafe, are more fodder for a gullible public led to believe only non-physicians are quacks and charlatans. When the Florida legislature was considering a non-nurse midwifery licensure bill, the state medical society claimed midwives were unsafe. However, when pressed to bring forth its proof, nothing was produced. Sadly, Certified Nurse-Midwifery organizations, themselves marginalized by their medical brothers, promote themselves as superior to non-nurse midwives in order to keep the midwifery turf for themselves.

The brains of pregnant women continue to function throughout their pregnancy, even during labor. Instead of legislators paternalistically �protecting� competent adult women from health care choices, states could ensure all women access to the full spectrum of childbearing alternatives and demand unbiased medical back-up for the women�s decisions. Full disclosure of alternatives ensures that an individual�s childbirth choices are wisely made. Legislator�s efforts to diminish our nation�s sorry birth statistics � we are chronically among the worst of industrialized nations - would be better directed at increasing opportunities for educating the public about the benefits of good nutrition, judicious use of technology, and providing access to a wide variety of child birth attendants.

Yvonne Lapp Cryns has degrees in nursing and law. She is the co-founder of Nursing Programs Online.com -http://www.nursingprogramsonline.com ,Go-Law-School.com - http://www.go-law-school.com , and Midwives.net - http://www.midwives.net . Yvonne also produced a video about midwives: http://www.compleatmother.com/video2.htm