We haven’t heard much from the Midwives Alliance of North America lately.
That’s not surprising since it has been a bad couple of years for pretending that homebirth is safe.
In January MANA published their landmark “study” (actually a non-representative survey of less than 30% of their members completed 5 years ago) claiming that homebirth is safe but ACTUALLY showing that homebirth increases the risk of perinatal death by 450%.
Why did the Midwives Alliance of North America wait 5 years to publish its statistics?
Their failure to publish the death rates had led everyone to the obvious conclusion that the death rates were hideous. Therefore, I suspect that they gambled that they had nothing to lose by publishing the data and then pretending it shows something different than what it actually shows. Everyone already knew that the death rates were horrible so the only way to combat that impression was to publish them and slice and dice the data in a million ways to confuse readers, while simultaneously misrepresenting what the death rates mean.
Simply put, MANA refused to release the death rates until 2014, because they know and have always known that these death rates are horrific. If the death rates were even close to demonstrating safety, MANA would have been shouting them from the roof tops since 2006, when the first analysis was complete. Instead they waited until they were pressure to release the data and are now hoping to hoodwink their followers by declaring that a 450% increased risk of death at homebirth is an indication of safety.
In March 2013, Oregon released an analysis of homebirth deaths prepared by Judith Rooks, CNM, MPH that showed that PLANNED homebirth with a LICENSED Oregon homebirth midwife had a death rate 800% higher than comparable risk hospital birth.
In June 2013, Grunebaum et al. demonstrated that homebirth increases the risk of a 5 minute Apgar score of zero by nearly 1000%.
In January of 2014, Wasden et al. demonstrated that the risk of anoxic brain injury is more than 18 times higher at homebirth than comparable risk hospital birth.
And those are just the highlights! Other papers and datasets were also published and all, without fail, showed that homebirth has a death rate 3-9 X higher than low risk hospital birth.
But now the MANA has struck back with a movie, Why is Midwifery Care and Home Birth Safe?
It’s nearly 7 minutes long and contains MANA’s definitive statement on homebirth safety, to wit:
Homebirth is safe because I AM A MIDWFIFE, and I said so!
Wow, talk about a compelling argument … NOT.
You might have thought that MANA would have emphasized it’s safety guidelines, but it couldn’t do that because it has LITERALLY no safety guidelines.
Instead, according to Ida Darragh, CPM, LM, homebirth is safe because: I am a midwife, and I said so!
You might have thought that MANA would present the data from its own study, but it couldn’t do that because the executives at MANA know that THEIR OWN DATA show homebirth increases the perinatal death rate.
Instead, according to Maria Iorillo, CPM, LM, homebirth is safe because: I am a midwife, and I said so!
You might have thought that MANA would present a compelling rebuttal to the multiple papers and datasets published in the last several years showing that homebirth increases the risk of perinatal death, but it couldn’t do that because it has no rebuttal for those studies and datasets.
Instead, according to Laurie Foster, CPM, LM, homebirth is safe because: I am a midwife, and I said so!
Okay, is it just me? Or does this seem remarkably pathetic and disparaging of the intelligence of their followers? I realize that homebirth advocates aren’t the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but are they really going to fall for “because I said so.”
Yes, MANA does sprinkle a few keywords in here and there: Intuition! Fear! Homeopathics!, but is that doesn’t seem particularly moving to me.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that even homebirth advocates are going to notice the woeful lack of data, statistics, empirical claims and rebuttals in this video.
“Because I said so,” might be compelling to a 4 year old, but not many pregnant women are going to buy it.
