Birth Wars?

This week there's a new Jennifer Block article out, examining the "homebirth debate". I wish it wasn't such a conflict, but many doctors and insurance companies seem stuck on the status quo, ignoring the fact that it isn't working. They continue to promote this idea that homebirths are unsafe when the statistics speak for themselves.

Thanks to Flickr user innocenteyez for this image / CC BY-ND 2.0

Homebirths are safe, midwives are experts in normal birth and hospitals are hurting women and babies by overusing technology, surgeries and drugs. It's not that these things aren't useful and good in their place, but 31% of women do not need major abdominal surgery to give birth, 50+% of labors do not need to be induced or augmented and 98% of births do not need to take place in the hospital.

These things don't need to happen.