Hospital birth: are we giving women the facts?

An article published last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics compares giving birth at home to being as reckless as driving without putting a seatbelt on your child (de Crespigny and Savulescu 2014). Planning to give birth at home is often thought of as quite an 'alternative' decision, with just 2.4 per cent of women in England and Wales opting for this in 2011 (Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2013). The politics surrounding place of birth in contemporary maternity care are highly contentious and not at all as clear cut as one may initially presume. As a midwife working in a busy UK unit, I would liken the assumption that a low risk birth is inherently safer in a high risk unit to investing in ill-fitting metaphorical seat belts, which may give the whole family whiplash.