Damn those dead homebirth babies!
They keep ruining efforts to pretend that homebirth is safe. What to do? Why bury them, of course, both literally and figuratively.
That’s precisely what Rixa Freeze attempts in her post criticizing the recommendations of the Australian coroner. She manages to discuss the recommendations without mentioning why they were promulgated. The recommendations are a direct response to 4 preventable homebirth deaths.
When I posted a comment on her website asking why she is ignoring the 4 dead babies, she promptly deleted it. That’s how you bury those babies.
I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any better from a woman who proudly posted video of the near death experience of her daughter Inga at her own homebirth. Moreover, she’s simply following the lead of Homebirth Australia which issues a 350 word statement that didn’t include the words “baby” or “death.”
In general, the homebirth blogosphere has greeted the coroner’s report with the sound of silence. It’s just another example of the way that homebirth midwives and homebirth advocates hide statistics, scientific papers and individual neonatal deaths so as to keep their followers ignorant of the facts.
The Homebirth Australia statement piously declaims:
Any law reform around homebirth must recognise that all women (including pregnant women) have a fundamental right to bodily autonomy and a legal right to refuse medical care.
Yes, women have a legal right to INFORMED refusal of medical care, but how can women be informed when homebirth advocates keep hiding the dead bodies?
In 2012, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that homebirth for low risk women dramatically increases the risk of neonatal death. The increased risk of death is far higher in women who have risk factors like breech, VBAC and twins. Everyone knows homebirth leads to preventable neonatal deaths. Everyone, that is, but women who get their information from homebirth midwives or other homebirth advocates.
Homebirth Australia couldn’t care less about whether babies live or die, and apparently Rixa Freeze doesn’t care, either. No one from the homebirth community has made even a single recommendation about how to reduce the risk of neonatal death, because the ugly reality is that homebirth advocates don’t care whether babies live or die. Their “experience” is more important than the lives of their own babies, let alone the lives of other women’s babies.
As far as I’m concerned, any attempt to criticize the coroner’s recommendations without even mentioning the 4 preventable deaths is unethical. But acting unethically, or even illegally, has never bothered homebirth supporters in the past. Evidently a pile of tiny bodies doesn’t change that repugnant reality.
