Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Grassroots Network: AMA Resolution to outlaw home birth

At their annual meeting over the weekend, the American Medical Association voted on two Resolutions that both denigrate CPMs and appear to be an effort to solidify medical monopoly of birth by seeking to prevent home births and to increase MD control over midwives.

You can find AMA's many Resolutions here (
scroll down). Two especially egregious resolutions are:Resolution 205 Home Deliveries (32KB), Resolution 239 Midwifery Scope of Practice and Licensure (38KB).

Resolution 205 includes a resolve to develop model legislation in support of the concept that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate postpartum period is in the hospital, or a birthing center within a hospital complex, that meets standards jointly outlined by the 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.

As usual, the AMA has provided no scientific evidence to support the statements or intent of the resolutions.

Clearly, the medical profession is getting desperate!

The Big Push for Midwives has issued a press release. For a version on Big Push letterhead (that you could download and print) go here.


Sincerely,
Susan Hodges gatekeeper


2 comments:

Nurture: Center for Growing Families said...

This is so infuriating! What can I do to work against this?

Why can't both options be okay (homebirths and hospital births)? This is yet another form of taking the choice away from women.
Mychelle

Anonymous said...

I beleive we need to take this seriously. This is just another way of eroding our basic human rights! So, in my opinion, what the AMA and ACOG are saying is that women are smart enough to choose to terminate a pregnancy, smart enough to choose an unnecessary c-section, yet we are not smart enough to give birth in the way we choose. Very scary!!!! What will the AMA think of next, that conception is too complicated for plain folk to do by themselves and we will be ordered to conceive in a lab???