The Fight Intensifies

The AMA and ACOG are pulling out all the stops in their assault on women's autonomy. Of course no law would/could ever be enacted in America, but these policy statements and efforts will have virtually the same effect: no insurance will be available for homebirth midwives or the docs who back them up, so both will simply stop doing them or face insurmountable risks. That will leave this country further polarized on the extremes: overwhelming majority of medicalized hospital births on one side (accompanied, of course, by skyrockteing c-section rates), and barely a blimp of underground, uninsured, direct-entry, homebirth midwives on the other. And NOTHING in between! Those will be the only two options. That's where we've been heading, and this latest attack simply accelerates the process.

Anyway, we're about five weeks away from Hallie's third homebirth experience (the first two were at a free-standing birthcenter in Manhattan, which is no longer there due to, what else, skyrocketing malpractice insurance!). Obviously, we don't agree with the "experts".