Oregon homebirth midwives have a very serious problem. A recent analysis prepared by Judith Rooks, CNM (a homebirth supporter) showed that for a baby alive at the start of labor, homebirth increased the risk of death by 800%.
That required action on the part of homebirth advocates. No, silly, not tightening requirements for the education and training of homebirth midwives. How about restricting their scope of practice? Are you nuts? Just because babies are dying left and right at Oregon homebirths is not reason to interfere with the income stream of homebirth supporters.
Instead, homebirth partisans have moved to bury dead homebirth babies twice. First they buried them in pathetically tiny coffins. Now they are burying them in report about homebirth that includes a blizzard of numbers, all the numbers EXCEPT the most important one, the death rate of babies who started labor alive.
You can find the unabridge document here.
It is 7 complete pages and includes a variety of pages, but search for any mention of “death rate” and you will find there is NOT A SINGLE MENTION of the deaths rates.
Why does that sound familiar? Maybe it’s because it’s just like the most recent report from Colorado homebirth midwives that ALSO neglected to mention the death rates. Maybe because it’s strikingly reminiscent of MANA’s decision to publicly proclaim the C-section rate, intervention rate, transfer rate, prematurity rate, and many other rates, and in a striking coincidence, they ALSO neglected to mention the death rates. It’s almost if there is a conspiracy among homebirth midwives and their supporters to hide the death toll of homebirth from American women!!
The abridged version tries another tactic: adding in stillbirths to dramatically soften the impact of the homebirth deaths.
The term perinatal mortality rate§ for planned out-of-hospital births (4.0/1,000 pregnancies) was nearly twice that of in- hospital births (2.1/1,000).
Doesn’t that sound so much better than an 800% increased death rate for babies who were alive at the start of labor? And it’s so much less informative, too, which comports with the efforts of MANA and homebirth midwives to obtain “misinformed consent.”
The folks at the Oregon Department of Health should be ashamed of themselves for agreeing to participate in a patently unethical whitewash.
The fact remains (even if they won’t include it) that for babies alive at the start of labor homebirth increases the risk of death by 800%. That is an appalling number, only slightly less appalling than the fact that homebirth partisans are desperate to hide the number by any means at their disposal.
Homebirth kills babies. Homebirth midwives and their partisans KNOW that homebirth kills babies and they are doing everything they possibly can to hide that information from American women.
When it comes to homebirth midwives, their lack of ethics is nearly as appalling as their lack of education and skill.
