The Business of Banning Being Born at Home

Posted by Mark Todd Engler in Health Care, Nanny State on Aug 2nd, 2008 | no responses

The Independent Institute's Anthony Gregory writes at LewRockwell.com's blog today that the legislative favor-seeking "medical-industrial complex" is obviously undermining patient choice and human freedom by advocating that government curtail or even outlaw midwifery and home births.

"How can people believe they are free when something as intimate as childbirth is so heavily controlled by the corporate state?" Gregory asks. "Of course, we need freedom for families to make their choice among hospitals and home birth options. For a case for home birth, and against the establishment that embraces a program of processing women in labor as fast as it can through the systematic reliance on the pitocin-epidural-cesarean process, see the great documentary, The Business of Being Born.

"The artificial process of bringing on contractions, then giving pain relief, then bringing on more contractions, then resorting to cesareans when things don't go as smoothly and quickly as desired, reminds me of the spiral of interventionism Mises described," Gregory adds.

From the July 11 ABCNews story, "Are Home Births Dangerous?":

The American Medical Association has agreed to support proposed legislation that, some physicians say, could make make having a planned birth in one's home difficult, to virtually impossible.

As of now, no actual legislation has been drawn up, but the AMA has agreed to back a measure called "Resolution 205," a request to support the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' (ACOG) position that home births are not safe.

"We are against home births, period," said Gregory Phillips, an ACOG spokesman.