There is so much to say about this article published online by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) on November 13, 2012.
Planned home birth: the professional responsibility response
Here is a quick summary if you don’t want to read the whole thing: Home-birth-like-experience in hospitals ultimately safer, more satisfying and cost effective for patients
This article is insanity. Nothing can ever come above a persons fundamental human rights. The ONLY person who has the right to choose what happens in birth is the birthing mother. She is the ONLY authority and all ethics lie with being sure she has access to the information and skilled care providers to support her right to autonomy over her body. To say that the professional responsibility can ever possibly come above someone’s basic human rights is to say we no longer live in a free country. When someone else has the right to decide what is OK or not OK to do with your body you are no longer free. Especially the idea of some self appointed authority figure. When did doctors become the owners of our bodies?
The evidence clearly support homebirth as a safe if not safer option than hospital birth. Here is the British Medical Journal article that clearly states that planned home birth is safe.
ACOG makes fundamentally wrong assumption that women choose homebirth for increased patient satisfaction. Women choose homebirth to create the safest possible birth for their baby, period. No woman is choosing a better experience over the safety of her baby. Home birth provides an environment where the physiology of birth is allowed to progress naturally which is safer for the life of the baby and for the life of the mother.
There is a huge oxymoron in the title of the summary article. It is not possible to have a “home-birth-like experience” in a hospital. Using that phrase makes it clear that the authors have not even begun to understand home birth. Its not about having pretty pictures on the walls and a bigger bed. It about normal physiology which cannot take place once you take a birthing mammal out of her own safe and private environment. You cannot recreate home birth out of the woman’s own home. Even the home of another person is not the same as your own home. The fact that you even have to consider who is around changes the outcome of birth. At home you know who is there because you invited them. For a thousand more reasons it is not even comparable in the slightest.
What are your thoughts on this article. Should the “professional responsibility” come before your basic human rights?”
You got that right. There is no comparison between home and hospital birth, revealing the deeply dysfunctional understanding that the ACOG has about birth. Their assumptions about motivations, as well as their slanted and selective statistical information supporting their positions are weak at best, and reveals their desire to maintain control over pregnant and birthing women, at worst.
You nailed it with your comments on “patient satisfaction.” Of course women feeling comfortable and empowered and safe affects birth in a meaningful way. The ACOG needs to stop patronizing women by making such condescending remarks. And women need to start opening their eyes to their eyes to the ways in which their human rights are being routinely violated via the rhetoric that this authority doles out.