Wired For Noise

The AMA is trying to help develop legislation to outlaw homebirths. They’re afraid that if they give the simple, little women choices they might not choose them. Gods forbid women have actual choices about what to do or not do with their own bodies, that would just be too much. Better they just sit back and let the professionals handle all the details.

My head hurts too much for a real blog post, so let me just break it down like this: Yay homebirth! Boo AMA!

OK, so how about I share what other, much more intelligent, women are saying about this.

Jill says: But just like with ACOG’s statement against homebirth, I think the AMA has shot themselves in the foot. They’ve got nothing on their side but their own hot air. The birth movement, however, is gaining more momentum in spite of, or perhaps BECAUSE of, all the bad press surrounding it. Maybe that’s why they’re scared: this 1% of women might grow to 2%, 5%, 10%, a number that can’t be so easily swept under the rug and dismissed as just a bunch of looneys on the fringes. Uh oh! Women with a mind of their own! LOOK OUT!

Amy says: Are they scared that women might question the establishment and demand better care for themselves and their babies? Are they scared that they might (gasp) lose money? Are they scared that women might take back birth?

Her Bad Mother says: So what’s the deal here? Why are these organizations wagging their fingers at Ricki Lake? Some argue that it’s a classic case of the medical establishment protecting their turf.

~L~ says:  I don’t believe this will pass. It’s a publicity stunt in response to all the good press homebirth has been receiving, namely via Ricki Lake. What annoys me most in this is that, akin to homeschooling, where most teachers you speak to privately think homeschooling is perfectly appropriate and efficacious, most doctors I have personally spoken to think homebirth is fine. The professionals in those fields have their ideas and have concerns I may not share, but they acknowledge on the whole that within certain parameters, life at home is just….life at home. It’s safe. It’s when you get the advocacy groups, the lobbyists together, that we have a problem. The associations perceive any stray sheep as an assault on their supremacy, an attack their bottom line. The groupthink at their conventions drives us all into an us vs them mentality that is just unnecessary.

*d* says:  Sigh. Until the medical community and legislators WAKE UP to the fact that I am a person, with my own brain, and that I’m am perfectly capable of reading medical studies and deciding for MYSELF what the risks are with regards to my medical choices, there will NOT be equality for women.

And the woman who started all the controversy, Ricki Lake says: The other trouble with the American MDs is that they seem to have lost all respect for women’s civil rights, indeed for the U.S. Constitution — the right to privacy, to bodily integrity, and the right of every adult to determine her own health care. The “father knows best” legislation they are promoting could indeed be used to criminally prosecute women who choose home birth, say, by equating it with child abuse.

*Edited to add this post by Jill. Not exactly on the AMA topic, but a good look at homebirth, choice, and women’s bodies: There are systematic and institutionalized incentives for the American Medical Association to promote hospital births and to keep childbirth squarely in the realm of a self-regulating medical profession. And there is a long history of a predominantly male medical establishment ignoring womenâ€s concerns and knowledge about their own bodies.

[tags]childbirth, home birth, AMA, Ricki Lake, homebirth, women[/tags]

Related Reading:

Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way: Revised Edition

Planned Breech Homebirth.: An article from: Special Delivery

Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three