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AMA Plans to Remove Mother's Choice
We've seen Mother's choices restricted in the past:
Little or no access to midwifery care
Food restricted during labor
Pushing in the lithotomy position
No Option for Vaginal Birth After Cesarean
- Just to name a few.
Now, the AMA is adding another item to their list - Outlawing Homebirth!
At their recent annual meeting, the AMA stated that:
"That our American Medical Association only advocate in legislative and regulatory arenas for the licensing of midwives who are certified by the American College of Nurse-Midwives." In plain terms, this means that the AMA will only support hospital midwives, or CNMs.
The Resolutions that the AMA put forth do not include any scientific evidence behind this decision. One of the AMA's statements in Resolution 204, is that during pregnancy and birth, emergencies can suddenly arise. If the AMA is concerned that homebirth midwives are not knowledgeable about and trained to handle emergencies and transfers, they should take up the issue with the organizations that provide midwifery certification and licensure, rather than trying to remove every mother's freedom of choice.
It's very bizarre that the film "The Business of Being Born" is part of the AMA's Resolution. What does Ricki Lake's documentary have to do with the Quality of Care Provided by Midwives? There is no correlation. However, this resolution obviously sums up ACOG's response to the film. If you've seen it, you are likely to remember the physicians in the film talking about how often they are told "just section them."
"Just section them."
If ACOG and the AMA are threatened by this truth being shared with the masses, perhaps they need to take a closer look at how maternity care is handled in the US.
What has changed about women's bodies in the past decade or two to warrant the gross increase of interventions during the birth process?
Despite the documented overuse of many procedures in hospitals, interventions that do not lead to better outcomes for mothers & babies, the AMA resolution states: "our American Medical Association support the recent American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) statement that “the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital, or a birthing center within a hospital complex, that meets standards jointly outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and ACOG, or in a freestanding birthing center that meets the standards of the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, The Joint Commission, or the American Association of Birth Centers”
www.acog.org/from_home/publications press_releases/nr02-06-06-2.cfm, accessed March 18,2000
We know that many physicians never see a completely "natural" birth during their training. They also do not have the opportunity to participate in homebirths. Without witnessing homebirth firsthand, one cannot fully understand the myriad of reasons why homebirth is embraced by mothers throughout the United States.
This time, the AMA and ACOG need to let mothers decide.
