Recently, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a resolution requesting that national legislation be enacted to prohibit planned births from taking place anywhere other than in a hospital setting and would prohibit midwifery in any form but via certified midwives (CNM) working in a hospital setting.
However, the largest, most respected study of home births found that among 5,000 low-risk pregnancies, babies were delivered just as safely at home with a certified practical midwife (CPM) as in a hospital. Currently, twenty-one U.S. states license midwives to attend home births, using both certified nurse midwives (CNM), which the AMA and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recognize, and CPM or other designated midwives, which they do not.
Limiting a woman’s right to choose her caregiver and place of birth is a step backward in women’s rights. As the oldest and largest association of doulas, or, non-medical support people in the world, DONA International supports a woman’s right to choose her caregiver and her birthplace. DONA International doulas champion all women’s birthing decisions, whether they choose to give birth in the hospital with a doctor or midwife, or to give birth at home with a trained professional. On such a momentous occasion, a woman should be allowed the control to make her birthing experience as comfortable as possible, not restricted by a trade union’s (AMA’s) desired limitations.
It is wholly appropriate that health care providers give each family the most current information related to the birth of their baby in an evidence-based, non-biased manner. Then, the decision about where and with whom to give birth naturally falls back to the affected family members themselves. It is the woman from whom the baby will be born. It is the family who will take responsibility for the baby after it is born. Therefore, so it should be the woman and her loved ones who make the decisions about this birth.
Only approximately one percent of American births take place outside of a hospital. Because most doulas work with midwives and physicians in a hospital setting, DONA International, which trains and certifies doulas, has no financial interest in the outcome of such legislation called for by the AMA. Our interest is in the scientific evidence and in maintaining the conviction that pregnant women, just as all other patients, are intelligent enough to give informed consent.
Debbie Young is the president of DONA International, www.DONA.org
