AMA seeks to outlaw home birth

Not content with discouraging and disapproving of home birth, the American Medical Association at its annual meeting last weekend passed a resolution to press for the outlawing of home birth. Given the skyrocketing c-section rate, the spiraling cost of birth, and the nothing-to-be-proud-of U.S. maternal and infant mortality rates (our newborn mortality rate is the second worst in the developed world), this move seems, well, a little insecure. Fact is, studies have found home births to be as safe or safer than hospital care for low-risk births and they cost two-thirds less. Chalk this one up as just one more episode in the sorry history of the AMA.

RH Reality Check rightly places this as part of broader attempts to criminalize motherhood, having “at their core coercive control over pregnancy and childbirth.”

"It's unclear what penalties the AMA will seek to impose on women who choose to give birth at home, either for religious, cultural or financial reasons-or just because they didn't make it to the hospital in time," said Susan Jenkins, Legal Counsel for The Big Push for Midwives 2008 campaign. "What we do know, however, is that any state that enacts such a law will immediately find itself in court, since a law dictating where a woman must give birth would be a clear violation of fundamental rights to privacy and other freedoms currently protected by the U.S. Constitution."