The UK's Royal College of Midwives has today criticised doctors for downplaying the benefits of home births, following claims by US academics last month that babies born at home are three times more likely to die than if born in hospital.
Commenting on the research, the medical journal, the Lancet, wrote a hugely emotive editorial saying that "women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk".
In an interview with the Guardian, Cathy Warwick, the general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, described the Lancet editorial as "sweeping and misoynistic".
She said midwives now "feel there is a concerted and calculated global attack and backlash against home birth which is being unfairly pilloried by some sectors of the global medical maternity establishment.
"There is a danger that risk during childbirth is presented in a way which is leading women to believe that hospital birth equals a safe birth. It does not. There is no hard and fast guarantee that a woman will have a safer birth in a hospital than at home".
As a mother who wanted a home birth but ended up in hospital, I am outraged by the Lancet editorial. Both have advantages and disadvantages but to say that women are putting their babies at risk by opting to give birth in the stress-free environment of their own home is clearly fallacious. The editor should apologise for framing the debate in such emotive terms.
