It varies with the state, because in America, medical practitioners are regulated by the state, not the federal government. Thus, although their are definitely national associations and boards and things, states can actually vary pretty severely. In some states, chiropractors and naturopaths are licensed to prescribe…

i’m pretty small and my baby was huge. he just couldn’t fit out.

They are in some states. In others, it’s the midwife lobby that stops them. They claim it would be an assault on a tradition of women passing down knowledge and experience from one to the other and then being co-opted by the medical and pharmaceutical industry. You’d never be able to get a job with any health care…

It’s weird how these people rationalize it. I read an article some time back about the number of dead babies in midwife-attended home births that were not from high risk pregnancies (meaning they’d no doubt have survived in any hospital). The way the midwives and parents rationalized the deaths was unbelievable. In…

Yes. YES.

“Every pregnant woman must contend with the possibility of death, which exists for each of us.”

Yeah. I had an awful, traumatic birth with my daughter. For about a year afterward I would get the shakes just thinking about it. And I still have nerve damage. But you know what would have been a much deeper and more lasting “wound”? If she had DIED.

Things can go badly pretty quickly during a birth. The best thing would be to give birth at a hospital that accommodates midwives, so that people could have the option of both. I wouldn’t do a home birth because I need to have someone suable if something goes wrong. And if I happen to need a blood transfusion or other…

I just...this baby died of privilege. That’s exactly what this is and it’s gross and sad. 

I’m lucky to live someplace where the cost of medical care has never once crossed my mind, but for religious reasons, Mennonites here won’t accept health insurance.

A lot of weird stuff can come out of your vagina post birth, so I can (somewhat) understand how someone ignorant of what’s normal postpartum could mistake signs of infection for something else. But that is exactly why you need the assistance of doctors, nurses, midwives, etc. It’s crazy to think that any of us know…

Taking nine hundred bucks from them is a nice touch in that regard!

And I’ll bet you a biscuit that said banning is EXACTLY what attracted the majority of the paying members. It made them feel special and superior. And I’m sure most of them happily told that woman that clearly she had done something wrong and didn’t listen to her body enough or some such horseshit.

The thing is? Bodies don’t really know shit. We die from literally countless things and in the main it’s because the body cannot recover from whatever it was that damaged it. 

I’m sorry, I feel like this is missing from the comments section: when is there ever a time that discolored discharge coming from your vagina is ever not a problem that should warrant medical attention??? Is that ever not a sign of infection? 

Free Birth Society is part of the broader free birth movement, which is, much like the home birth movement, “rooted in a dissatisfaction with the current obstetrical model,” as the Daily Beast puts it. That model includes a 30 percent cesarean section rate for mothers in the United States. Free birthers also point…

Just like the anti-vax nutjobs, this is even more infuriating because the victims are the most innocent and without choice. Fuck every single one of these Free Birth idiots. And fuck this whole “natural” movement that’s taking us backwards. Yeah, women used to sometimes give birth alone. But a fucking lot of them…

this radical work of healing the deepest wounds on this earth

Home birth can be great for some women, but the fact that this group deletes any advise that counters their beliefs and doesn’t make room for other treatment options makes them a cult, and a very dangerous one at that.

I really don’t understand why the birthing process has become so so polemic. Whether you give birth at home or in a hospital there are always going to be risks. Nothing is perfect. This is--to me-- another arm of women’s bullshit perfectionism that they throw onto other women. There are some great births in a hospital…