UPI has published an article on the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) data analysis, “Perspectives on risk: Assessment of risk profiles and outcomes among women planning community birth in the United States.” As you can tell by the title, the study evaluates...
Why Are Cesarean Rates Are So High? Perspectives from the Trenches
A study in the most recent issue of Birth provides eye-opening illumination on non-medical reasons for high cesarean rates (Kennedy 2016). Investigators at Yale’s med-school affiliated hospital conducted in-depth interviews eliciting opinions on how the institution...
ACOG Issues New Committee Opinion on Home Birth: Some Things Old, Some Things New
The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) has published a revised and updated Committee Opinion on “Planned Home Birth.” If you read the media reports on it, you would think the new Opinion is “same-old, same-old,” but there are some...
Dueling Statistics: Is Out-of-Hospital Birth Safe?
Popping up all over the internet this past week were the results of a New England Journal of Medicine study of Oregon State statistics finding that planned out-of-hospital birth slightly increases risk of perinatal death but greatly reduces likelihood of cesarean in...