Doctor Convenience
The convenience of physicians often dictates certain impositions on the mother in the standardized hospital birth. Midwives will tell you that there are certain doctors whose babies arrive on certain days of the week (regardless of a baby's schedule!).
This problem was recently highlighted in a court case involving the Dortmund Women's Clinic in West Germany. The case brought out that more than half of all the births in the clinic were artificially induced: there were few if any births on Saturdays, Sundays, nights or Wednesday afternoon (which the doctors had off!). (Reuters, May 4, 1981)
Labor-inducing drugs, oxytocin primarily, can cause usually strong and frequent contractions, which doctors acknowledge can deprive the baby of oxygen — causing brain damage. The best you can say about the inducement of labor, however risky, is that at least it is less barbaric than the practice in standardized hospitals in the 1950s, where babies would be artificially held back from birth because the doctor was not yet on hand!
The Disease Theory of Pregnancy
Another of the reasons why expectant parents turned to natural childbirth in the 1970s was a revulsion towards the "illness-oriented" atmosphere of most hospitals. One writer for the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's sums up the unappealing nature of hospital birth nicely:
"If there's one emotion new mothers may share . . . it's frustration at a less-than-satisfactory hospital experience. The place is so geared to sickness that childbirth sometimes seems reduced to insignificance."
"Doctors," according to Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., "intervene too much in what is a natural process.
They act as if pregnancy is a nine-month disease that needs their help to be resolved." The words of a spokesman for the California Medical Association on why his organization opposes home birth are revealing: "Our position is that there are so many things which can go wrong that the procedure should take place in accredited facilities."
"The procedure"! A mechanical word for a natural event, reflecting the mentality of orthodox obstetrics! As California State Senator Barry Keene has noted, some doctors believe "that childbirth is a medical event and not a natural event that's been going on for thousands of years."
Backlash
The movement toward natural childbirth gained growing popular support throughout the 1970s. Yet sometime in the late 1970s (or early 1980s depending with whom you speak), "alternative" childbirth began to come under severe attack from the "establishment" in obstetrical medicine.
The challenge to alternative birth is not merely an American trend, though it is centered in the United States. Medical statistician David Stewart declares the medical backlash is "global," noting that physician attendance at a home birth has been labeled "unbecoming conduct" in Canada.
The International Association of Parents and Professionals for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth (NAPSAC) cites an estimate that at least 90 percent of physicians who support homebirth or other non standardized childbirth are currently facing some sort of trouble — investigation by medical boards, revocation of hospital privileges, cancellation of insurance, or, most drastic, suspension of their licenses.
Recently, statistician Stewart, who is head of NAPSAC, noted in early 1981 that "in the last two months, ten doctors in ten states lost their licenses or were threatened with malpractice insurance cancellations or loss of their hospital privileges because they do home births" (quoted in Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1981).
In California, where the attack is in full swing, Ginny Cassidy‑Brinn of the Los Angeles Feminist Women's Health Center observes that "everybody who attends home births around the state is being harassed."
The harassment in some cases seems particularly mean spirited, directed at any doctor, nurse or midwife who has anything to do with home or alternative birth regardless of any instance of supposed negligence or incompetence. Thus NAPSAC News (Spring 81) reports that one Chicago M.D., who doesn't even do out-of-hospital births, has been harassed because he does serve as a back-up for physicians who do engage in home births!
In San Diego, California, the local medical society, according to the Association for Childbirth at Home, International (ACHI), has denied membership to doctors attending home births.
ACHI also reports that a number of doctors and hospitals deliberately deny prenatal care to women planning home births. One ACHI survey in Houston, Texas, in 1978 found 20 obstetricians who refused prenatal care to such women. ACHI also reports that a local obstetrical society in Franklin
County, Ohio, passed a resolution to "advise any physician in Franklin County from participating in prenatal care or delivery of any patient planning home delivery" (emphasis added).
At least in some instances, it would appear that "establishment" doctors are less concerned with the health of living mothers and their unborn babies — even to the point of denying prenatal care! — than they are with upholding the standardized, overly interventionist way of childbirth employed in many hospitals!
Midwives have also come under attack. They are increasingly being prosecuted for various "crimes" associated with attending a home birth, mostly practicing medicine without a license.
The attacks on those involved in alternative births seem to stem from the deliberate efforts of more orthodox doctors and not from disgruntled patients.
NAPSAC reports that in Iowa, one doctor engaged in a home birth had heard, unofficially, that state medical authorities were "out to do away with home births." It also reports that an Alaska home birth physician was told by local doctors that they intended to "get him."
And Dr. Hai Abdul, a natural childbirth physician facing similar pressures in California, notes that the California Medical Association in its January, 1981, bulletin, made its "#1 priority an all-out attack on home birth and the practice of Midwifery." (You would think their number one priority should be an attack on disease!)
The Double Standard
Obstetricians are 10 times more likely to be sued than other kinds of doctors, according to the study by Seattle physician Helen Marieskind. Moreover, over the course of time of an obstetrician's practice, whether hospital or alternative, there is a tremendous statistical probability of some small number of tragedies, whether they be still births, cripplings or some other terrible consequence. When such occur to a doctor following standard hospital practice, there is a good chance that medical licensing authorities will choose not to investigate. Yet when tragedies occur to a doctor practicing home deliveries, there is a far greater likelihood that the doctor will be investigated.
ACHI argues that "home births are disproportionately investigated. Home births are investigated even when outcomes are good, while hospital mistakes are rarely questioned." NAPSAC makes a similar statement: "What would merely be a cause of mild reprimand with a hospital obstetrician is grounds for suspension of the right to practice for a home birth doctor."
Probably the worst example of the double standard is revealed in the murder charge brought against midwife Rosalie Tarpening of Madera County, California. She was put on trial for murder because of the death of a baby. At trial, however, it was revealed that the baby died, not because of anything she did or didn't do, but because the hospital to which the baby was taken blew out the infant's lungs by pumping oxygen in at too high a pressure!
The Biggest Story in Medicine
Dr. Mendelsohn claims the alternative birth controversy "is going to be the biggest story in medicine in the 1980s." As of the moment, the outcome is in doubt, though both sides are mobilizing for what seems to be a particularly hard fought conflict. One natural childbirth physician has already vowed he will "go underground" if state medical authorities try to stop his practice.
Of course, in a better world, say the world after Jesus Christ returns, the natural childbirth people will have won hands down. In that world, mothers will be healthy and there will be no need for hospitals. Childbirth will be a peaceful, family-oriented, love-filled event reflecting, as it does, a part of God's own plan for man. It will not be the terror-filled nightmare that it can be in many hospitals today.
For the here and now, thousands of parents have already experienced, firsthand, the general superiority of natural childbirth. As it so happens, the world's most beautiful, intelligent and well-disposed baby, Katherine Anne Calkins (my daughter!), was born in an alternative birth center, and she (as well as her mother) profited immensely from the experience.
Later, her mother, outraged that state medical authorities would seek, by a pattern of harassment against alternative birth physicians, to deny her next child the same experience, dashed off the following message to her physician who attended her first birth, the eloquence of which speaks for itself:
"How can a mother describe to others the beauty of the marvelous, golden moments of childbirth. And then the triumphant feeling of holding, touching and loving the newborn after birth. I was not to be cheated out of this. I truly appreciated you and your staff in allowing me to go my full term and delivery without drugs or being tied down. Also having the father there was a great help to me and a wonderful experience for him. A bond of family love was formed. My delivery was quicker and easier by far than the average. And my baby is very healthy and happy. Dr. Abdul, your methods must be given proper credit."