It’s been nearly two weeks since my Op-Ed, Why is American Home Birth So Dangerous?, was published in The New York Times in which I explained that American homebirth has higher death rates because of substandard self-proclaimed midwives known as CPMs (certified professional midwives). It seems to me that if anyone were going to rebut my claims, they would have done so by now. Yet no one in the homebirth industry has addressed them; that tells you something very important:
The American homebirth industry has no data to show it safe and even they can’t think of a reason why CPMs should fail to meet international midwifery standards.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Why no rebuttal from Ricki Lake? Gene DeClercq? Lamaze International? The Childbirth Connection? Because American homebirth IS dangerous.[/pullquote]
Where are its public champions?
Where is Ricki Lake, who has made a career of promoting homebirth?
Where is Melissa Cheyney? She didn’t even bother to defend her 2014 paper that purported to show that homebirth is safe but actually showed it has a mortality rate 450% higher than comparable risk hospital birth.
Where is Marian MacDorman, who in her role as a CDC statistician has published several papers extolling the rise of homebirth while never mentioning the death rate?
Where is Gene DeClercq? He has argued repeatedly, and in a variety of forums, that American homebirth is safe, but apparently he couldn’t step forward to provide any proof.
Where is Henci Goer?
Where is Lamaze International?
Where is the Childbirth Connection?
Not a single one could present even a single bit of data to rebut my claims.
How about my assertion that CPMs are essentially lay people who want to attend births but fail to meet international midwifery standards?
No one denied it.
What about my claim that American homebirth is more dangerous than homebirth elsewhere because of a woeful lack of regulation?
No one offered anything to rebut that either.
Which suggests:
Professional American homebirth advocates and organizations know that American homebirth has a high rate of preventable deaths, deaths that do not occur in homebirth in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada or Australia. They known and they haven’t done anything about it.
Why not?
The American homebirth industry thinks it’s more important to protect itself than to protect babies and mothers.
It’s just that simple.
When confronted with the evidence that American homebirth is dangerous, professional homebirth advocates and organizations couldn’t deny it.
They didn’t even bother.
