Ricki Lake Responds to AMA Statement About Home Childbirth
Actress and former talk show host Ricki Lake is responding to a statement made by the American Medical Association (AMA) about her documentary film “The Business of Being Born.”
“The Business of Being Born” chronicles Ricki Lake’s choice to home birth her second son in 2001. The AMA is offering up plenty of criticism about using midwives and having babies at home, versus traditional hospital births.
Ricki Lake responded to AMA’s criticism, saying, “It feels like a personal attack. I can’t imagine they are scared everyone will have a home birth because I did. The message of the film is about having all the choices in birth, it’s about getting information and being empowered. The documentary is a point of view. Home birth is not for everyone.”
The AMA supports the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ official recommendation that “the safest setting for labor, deilvery, 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 and ACOG.”
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On June 17th 2008, Braden wrote:
Working in emergency medicine, I whole-heartedly agree with the AMA’s point of view on in-hospital births. The list of complications and things that can go wrong very quickly in a birth is staggering. The fact that most births go smoothly is actually unfortunate in the respect that it encourages people to do home births where resuscitation equipment and personnel are not readily available.
That said, my wife and I are using a midwife for our birth and I think that is a great choice - as long as the birth is at a location where emergency help is readily available if needed.
On June 18th 2008, uk midwife wrote:
Many of the things that “go wrong” during childbirth are due to the process being interfered with in the first place. An experienced midwife will recognize a problem and have time to transfer to hospital in most normal labours. I have dealt quickly and effectively with problems at home to prevent them escalating. I have been a home birth midwife for 9 years and have a 20% transfer rate of which none have been for dire emergencies that resulted in a bad outcome. For those 20% of women and babies the hospital was the best place at that time. The other 80% were where they should have been too. Rather than quote the rare occurrences of shoulder dystocia, eclampsia, and post partum hemorrhage etc the medical establishment may like to consider all the unnecessary c sections, inductions of labour and other invasive procedures to both mother and baby that put their health at risk. If anyone doubts the safety of home birth and thinks that hospital is the safest place for all mothers and babies they should ask the question “don’t mothers and babies die in hospitals?” Information, education and choice are what’s needed and is what Ricki is trying to achieve. This issue is more about power and money than it is ever about safety.