While the US College of Obstetrics and Gynecology continues to deny that home births are a safe and viable option, our friends in the UK are finally seeing the light.
The National Childbirth Trust said the research which concluded home births were not safe and dated back to the 1970s and was flawed. In fact, it said there was a pool of evidence to suggest that home births were at least as safe as giving birth in hospital. Patient satisfaction levels were higher for home births, and simply booking a home birth led to a halving of the Caesarean section rate, it claimed. On hearing of the Government’s plans to change policy, a NCT spokeswoman said: “It has taken 30 years for the Government to realise that the policy of pushing every woman giving birth into hospital was misguided.”
It’s nice to hear somebody’s government saying it! How long until the US catches on? Unfortunately for UK midwives, the government also wants to require them all to have malpractice insurance–a costly and sometimes impossible feat for home birth midwives.
Radical Doula 