Today we appeared in Federal Court in Boston, to hear oral argument on motions in my case against Gina Crosley-Corcoran. It was an amazing experience.

For over two hours I listened to a series of excellent lawyers explain and argue the various aspects of the case.

I was extremely pleased with my lawyers’ presentations and gratified that the judge took such a keen interest, and questioned all the lawyers quite closely.

This was not a trial; we are nowhere near a trial yet. In a typical case, a complaint is filed, the defendant files a response, both side take discovery (examine documents and take depositions), and only then does a trial occur. I filed my complaint, but Gina has yet to file a response because her first act was to ask for the case to be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. The judge also chose to review the merits of the case. Today we argued about both jurisdiction and the merits.

Fundamentally, the case is about censorship. Gina, by her own admission in print, was trying to get my blog thrown off the web. The weapon she used/abused was the DMCA takedown notice, a procedure governed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

This case is not, and never was, about Gina’s picture of herself giving me the finger. Copyright is not absolute. It is subject to the doctrine of Fair Use. Fair Use defines the situations in which an otherwise copyrighted quote or image can be used in another work. Editorial criticism is one of clearest examples of Fair Use. For example, when a book reviewer quotes a passage from a book to illustrate its flaws, the author is not entitled to claim copyright infringement, even though he or she owns the copyright for those words. When the quotation is being used as part of commentary, its use is protected.

The DMCA requires that the person who files a DMCA notice “must have a good faith belief that there is no legal basis for the use of the materials complained of.” If the material in question is covered by Fair Use, there is no legal basis for a DMCA complaint. We allege that Gina filed the DMCA takedown notices even though she was aware that my use of her image was not a copyright violation.

The DMCA requires that when anyone files a DMCA takedown notice with a webhost, the content in question must be removed for 10-14 days, pending a lawsuit, and then can be put back up if no legal action is taken. In some circumstances, a webhost will take an entire site down until the relevant content is removed. When Gina filed her DMCA takedown notices, she did it to harass me, in the hope that my site would be taken down, as it was intermittently. When Gina solicited others to file DMCA notices, and volunteered to act as the legal agent of others in filing DMCA notices, she did it with the intent to silence me, as she has acknowledged on her own Facebook page.

I filed suit to stop the harassment, to stop the attempt to force my blog off the web, and to stop the knowing abuse of the DMCA notice process by filing a notice of a copyright violation after Gina already knew that her copyright was not violated. Congress, in writing the DMCA legislation recognized the possibility that copyright holders might file frivolous DMCA notices, and set up a penalty for those who abuse the process.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Digital Media Law Project of Harvard Law School filed a brief explaining why they agreed with me that I had stated a legally sufficient claim that Gina’s conduct constituted an abuse of the DMCA process. The Motion Picture Association of America filed a brief explaining why the DMCA process should not require that copyright holders make an effort to determine if the purported copyright violation was actually covered by the doctrine of Fair Use.

This issue is so important to the EFF and the MPAA that they took the unusual step of petitioning the Court to be allowed to argue alongside the lawyers for myself and for Gina. They were each granted 15 minutes to argue the specifics of their views of the DMCA and the abuse of the process, and I was fascinated to hear a detailed and extended analysis of the meaning of various parts of the DMCA.

There have been lots of side issues that have been briefed and were discussed. Most prominent among them is the jurisdiction issue. In Gina’s original motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, she argued that she had no connection with Massachusetts and did not know that I lived in Massachusetts. However, she is on record directly on her Facebook page, proclaiming that she knew my address on the very day that she filed the second DMCA notice.

In addition, Gina argued that it would be too burdensome to litigate a case in Massachusetts. But the blizzard of paper that she has sent to the Court indicates otherwise. Gina has filed six separate briefs already, and hasn’t even responded to the original complaint yet! Clearly, she has no trouble litigating in Massachusetts.

But no one should forget that at the heart, this is about an attempt at silencing me. The abuse of the DMCA was just the means, and Gina’s photo was just the pretext.

The tech community has expressed deep interest in the case because they are concerned that the DMCA can be wielded to silence speech. If the standard for abuse is set too low, it will be difficult to show that anyone ever knowingly and deliberately abused the DMCA process. They are following the case closely because it is the only one in which the defendant has publicly acknowledged that she was using the DMCA, not to protect copyright, but to silence someone with whom she disagreed. As a number of tech bloggers have noted, if this isn’t a violation of the DMCA process, there is no such thing as a violation of the DMCA process. That cannot be what Congress intended.

At this point, all I am arguing for is the right to go forward, to have Gina answer the complaint, turn over her documents for review and submit to a deposition to determine what she knew when. We haven’t even gotten to the actual case yet. It is up to the judge to decide if we will ever get to it.

OMG! OMG! OMG!

Did you see what Similac did??!!

They’ve created the a product specifically designed to destroy the motherbabybreast relationship! And if that’s not bad enough, they created an irresistible marketing campaign that converts breastfeeding mothers into supplementing mothers AGAINST THEIR WILL!!

But don’t worry …

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird; it’s a plane; …. no it’s Lacti-Shrew come to rescue other mothers who are so stupid that they will buy anything they see in an advertisement.

Because we all know that there is nothing that women of America want more than to emulate the self-proclaimed awesome sanctimommies whose biggest claim to fame is that they EXCLUSIVELY breastfeed their vaginally born (WITHOUT PAIN MEDICATION, and don’t you forget it) babies.

Lacti-Shrew knows that the only thing keeping all those other inferior mothers from emulating their privileged, Western, white, well off selves is lack of education. Those poor women have no idea of the benefits of breastfeeding!! That’s why Lacti-Shrews everywhere must create lots and lots of rules to force educate women to breastfeed.

All the good Lacti-Shrews are OUTRAGED.

Lactating Girl:

I was livid. I couldn’t even explain why after sitting and pondering it to myself for a while. Now though, I think that I’ve nailed down what’s so wrong with this new formula.

First off, it’s implying that not all formulas are good enough for supplementing breast milk. Well, I’ll definitely agree that formulas are not the best way to supplement (can you say donated milk?), but sometimes it just has to happen. Just because I’m a breastfeeding advocate doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the benefits of formula being readily available… So I’m not doing the best for my baby when supplementing if I don’t do it with this formula? Like we don’t already have enough mama guilt in this world.

Lactating Girl clearly has a problem understanding irony.

Lacti-Shrew knows that there is no such thing as low breastmilk supply. Those women who insists they aren’t making enough milk for their babies are lazy liars looking for the easy way out. And their screaming babies are liars, too!!

Don’t you know that breastfeeding women have a target on their breasts.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend in formula marketing occurred this month with the release of a new product directly targeting and undermining breastfeeding moms. The May 11, 2013, release of a Similac for Supplementation confirms the company is desperately trying to increase its customer base. This blatant attempt to sabotage the breastfeeding relationship is outrageous… This is a pathetic bid for the breastfeeding audience. Unfortunately, it could just work, especially since this message is being perpetuated by a new study released two days later in Pediatrics. The article’s release date (occurring the same week this formula hit the shelves) is highly suspect. It may seem like a conspiracy theory, but as well-equipped as the strategists are, the timing is not a coincidence and neither is the correlation between Abbott and the co-author of the study, who was previously employed by the maker of Similac.

See how big the conspiracy to undermine breastfeeding is? Even the pediatricians are in on it!

You might be wondering why women who would never use formula of any kind would care about whether other breastfeeding women might use formula. If so, you are missing the point!! Lacti-Shrew has low self-esteem and is desperate for adulation. She needs other women to mirror her own choices in order to feel good about herself. Moreover, if supplementing with formula is okay, then Lacti-Shrew isn’t the super-special mama that you are supposed to believe she is.

Therefore, Lacti-Shrew must cleanse the world of anything and everything that does not boost her self-esteem. Hospital offers formula gifts to new mothers? Take them away! Hospitals allow women to choose formula feeding without shaming them? Lock that formula up and make her beg for it!! Create a special formula designed specifically to make up for whatever breastfeeding babies may lack? Vilify women who choose it, and make it clear that they are too stupid to resist marketing.

Point out that it is grossly inappropriate for privileged Western, white, well off women to act like they are superior to other women, smarter and more able to resist the claims of advertisers and get an ear full of irony: You think women aren’t vulnerable to marketing? Check your privilege.

Now that’s funny! Privileged Western, white, well off women accusing those who don’t subscribe to their theory that everyone else is stupid and more vulnerable to marketing than themselves are accusing women who don’t agree with them for being privileged.

Lacti-Shrew is nothing if not blind to her own withering contempt for anyone who doesn’t emulate her.

To those who think that the outrage about Similac for Supplementation is about formula, think again. Lacti-Shrews everywhere are “livid” because the mere existence of a formula for supplementation is a threat to their self-esteem. Their “achievement” of using their breasts exclusively to feed their babies isn’t much of an achievement if it’s equally acceptable to to do anything else.

Yes, you read that right.

No, I’m not talking about sexual assault in the tub.

I’m talking about the latest in an endless parade of reasons that natural childbirth advocates can feel victimized.

You may recall the horror of hatting, wherein the act of putting a knit hat on a newborn baby purportedly can precipitate a maternal hemorrhage or affect a baby’s health for the rest of his life.

But whining about your baby’s hat is so 2012. Today’s NCB advocates are modeling the latest in victimology, as explained on CafeMom:

Almost to years after i gave birth, I still find myself upset at the hospital we were at…

They gave my twins their first bath without even telling me. It was the day after they were born, the nurse told me to get up and walk and the babies would sleep in the nursery. I was gone for about 20 minutes and when I came back, they brought the babies back and said they had their first bath… I feel like they took something away from me.

I never got a warning. At the time i kept it in and now I’m sorry I did because to this day, it still hurts. ;(

Despite all the talk of empowerment, the role of victim is hallowed in natural childbirth advocacy, and it is inextricable from the NCB penchant for finding new reasons to whine. Just like Bridezillas, Birthzillas are continually searching for ever more trivial reasons to be outraged that their “special day” was ruined.

Indeed, there is an entire NCB website devoted to whining about victimization. It’s called My OB Said What??!! and it is seemingly endless parade of whining from women whose had their feelings hurt when their providers told them things they didn’t want to hear, on the false presumption that these were adults mature enough to deal with disappointment. The providers didn’t understand that in NCB world disappointment=victimization, being forced to address reality=victimization, getting only a healthy baby but having diminished bragging rights=victimization.

For a movement that claims to be about empowering women, there are an amazing amount of women so fragile that two years later they are complaining that they didn’t get to give the baby his or her first bath.

But then natural childbirth advocacy was never about birth, and certainly never about the baby. It’s about the way that women want to see themselves, and apparently a lot of NCB advocates want to see themselves as victims.

The phrase “bath rape” was coined by a member of the Fed Up With Natural Childbirth Facebook group.

Those who want the very best for their children choose science over pseudoscience.

Of course science is hard, and that means that many people don’t understand it. To cover up their lack of understanding, they whine that science is male and patriarchal and that women have “different ways of knowing.”

Science does not give you “atta girls” for defying authority. Science is about adult behavior, not juvenile antics to impress your friends.

Science doesn’t give you the opportunity to claim that you “did your research” and are “educated.” Anyone who has really done research or has obtained a degree in a scientific discipline would never be found boasting that they are “educated” and would never do “research” on Google.

Science is no fun. There are no grand conspiracy theories, no government organizations trying to make you and your children sick. There’s just reality, as boring as that is.

Science is a killjoy, always demanding evidence, and displaying extreme skepticism about people curing cancer and autism through their own efforts.

Science makes it hard to preen as a Sanctimommy because science offers no guarantees, only probabilities.

It’s easy and so much fun to choose pseudoscience, especially because it allows you to pretend that you are a better mother than others, but being a good mother isn’t about easy and fun.

That’s why choosy mothers choose science.

Two new papers shed light on the appalling outcomes at American homebirth.

The first paper is Apgar Score of Zero at Five Minutes and Neonatal Seizures or Serious Neurologic Dysfunction in Relation to Birth Setting by Grunebaum et al.

The authors used CDC data to assess birth outcomes:

Data from the United States Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics birth certificate data files were used to assess deliveries by physicians and midwives in and out of the hospital for the 4-year period from 2007-2010 for singleton term births (≥37 weeks gestation) and ≥2,500 grams. Five-minute Apgar scores of zero and neonatal seizures or serious neurologic dysfunction were analyzed for four groups by birth setting and birth attendant (hospital physician, hospital midwife, free-standing birth center midwife, and home midwife).

They found:

Home births (RR 10.55) and births in free-standing birth centers (RR 3.56) attended by midwives had a significantly higher risk of a 5-minute Apgar score of zero (p<.0001) than hospital births attended by physicians or midwives. Home births (RR 3.80) and births in free-standing birth centers attended by midwives (RR 1.88) had a significantly higher risk of neonatal seizures or serious neurologic dysfunction (p<.0001) than hospital births attended by physicians or midwives. (my emphasis)

In other words, homebirth increases the risk of an Apgar score of zero by nearly 1000%!!

As the authors explain:

There is an identifiable pattern in these data for the outcomes of singleton term births: home birth is associated with a significantly increased risk of 5-minute Apgar score of 0 and neonatal seizures or serious neurologic dysfunction compared to hospital birth. When it comes to home birth versus hospital birth, setting is strongly associated with worse outcomes. The increased rate of adverse outcomes of home births exists despite the reported lower risk profile of home birth.13 The pattern for free-standing birth centers is also identifiable: this setting is associated with increased risk compared to hospital delivery, though not as high risk as home birth. When it comes to freestanding birth center versus hospital, setting is strongly associated with worse outcomes.

It is essential to note that these significantly increased risks of adverse outcomes from the setting of home and from the setting of free-standing birth centers reported here may be serious underestimations of clinical complications. (my emphasis)

The choice of an Apgar score of zero and the primary outcome measurement is particularly apt, since severe neurologic injury is particularly likely at homebirth, because homebirth midwives do not monitor the fetal heart rate appropriately. Hence the inordinate number of babies who drop dead or nearly dead into the hands of clueless homebirth midwives. Babies with a 5 minute Apgar score of zero include those that died intrapartum, but also those that were born without vital signs who were subsequently resuscitated by emergency personnel.

Interestingly the authors chose to use the MD group as the reference group despite the fact that it contains high risk women. I typically use the hospital based midwife as a reference since their are fewer high risk patients. Using that standard, homebirth has a risk of 5 minute Apgar score of zero that is 19X higher than low risk hospital birth!

The authors point out that all practitioner are REQUIRED to disclose this information to women contemplating homebirth, midwives as well as obstetricians.

The second paper is Selected perinatal outcomes associated with planned home births in the United States by Cheng et al.

The authors looked at birth outcomes from the year 2008.

There were 2,081,753 births meeting study criteria. Of these, 12,039 (0.58%) were planned home births. More planned home births had 5-minute Apgar score <4 (0.37%) compared to hospital births (0.24%; aOR 1.87; 95% CI 1.36-2.58) and neonatal seizure (0.06% vs. 0.02% respectively; aOR 3.08; 95% CI 1.44-6.58). Women with planned home birth had fewer interventions, including operative vaginal delivery, and labor induction/augmentation.

This is precisely what you would expect when mothers and midwives shun lifesaving interventions.

I’ve used the CDC Wonder data from 2003-2008 to demonstrate that in each year, planned homebirth with a homebirth midwives has a neonatal death rate anywhere from 3-7X higher than hospital birth. These new papers add valuable information by looking at severe neurologic outcomes as well and showing that such outcomes are much more common at planned homebirth.

I look forward to seeing how Henci Goer, Ina May Gaskin, Jennifer Block and other professional homebirth advocates attempt explain these statistics away. I’m guessing that they will be at a loss, and therefore simply ignore these hideous results.

For sale
Cloth diapers
Never worn
Midwife rally Monday

*With apologies to Hemingway

On June 14, I wrote about Ank de Jonge’s latest attempt to show that homebirth is safe (No, new Dutch study does NOT show that homebirth is safe). As I mentioned at the time, de Jonge continues to slice and dice the Dutch homebirth data is an effort to somehow prove that homebirth is safe, when the data suggests that it is not.

In the latest paper discussed in that post, Severe adverse maternal outcomes among low risk women with planned home versus hospital births in the Netherlands: nationwide cohort study,  de Jonge concluded:

Low risk women in primary care at the onset of labour with planned home birth had lower rates of severe acute maternal morbidity, postpartum haemorrhage, and manual removal of placenta than those with planned hospital birth. For parous women these differences were statistically significant…

In other words, there was no difference in severe acute maternal morbidity (SAMM) between home and hospital among nulliparous women and a slightly lower rate of SAMM for parous women at homebirth.

There was just one teensy, weensy problem. de Jonge left out the mortality rates. Severe maternal morbidity is an appropriate measure of safely ONLY when death rate is zero or nearly zero. If the death rate is not zero, that MUST be taken into account in assessing safety. My Letter to the Editor of the BMJ regarding this inexplicable oversight was published the same day. de Jonge and colleagues have finally responded, and what do you know, the maternal mortality was NOT zero.

The reply appears to continue the trend of apparent obfuscation of the results.

The authors claim:

We did not mention maternal deaths in our study, but they were included among the women with severe acute maternal morbidity (SAMM). There were two maternal deaths in the planned home birth group (2 per 100,000) and three in the planned hospital birth group (6 per 100,000). The differences between these rates were not statistically significant (Fisher’s exact test, P=0.367).

They described 1 homebirth death due to cerebral hemorrhage possibly secondary to pre-eclampsia. The authors try to blame the doctors who evaluated the woman at 37 weeks, at which time she was felt to fine. A lot can and does happen in the last week of pregnancy. To blame the doctors who saw the woman a week before her collapse and absolve the midwife who cared for her at the time of birth is bizarre.

What about the other homebirth death? Funny you should mention that. The authors did not say. They lumped the second homebirth death in with the hospital deaths and reported:

The other four women were referred during labour from primary to secondary care because of meconium stained liquor. One woman suffered from sudden collapse during labour, when she was already in secondary care, and died. Although no definite diagnosis was made at postmortem examination, a cardiac cause appeared to be most likely.

A woman who gave birth spontaneously was discharged after one day. On the fourth day postpartum she was readmitted because of profuse vaginal bleeding and shortness of breath. She had a sudden collapse and died. Postmortem examination showed sinus sagittalis superior thrombosis.

Two women died a few weeks after they gave birth from causes not related to the delivery; one from a severe asthma attack, the other one fell down the stairs, had a skull fracture and died of a subarachnoid haemorrhage.

Since the authors did not specify that either of the woman who died of causes unrelated to delivery was in the homebirth group, it seems safe to assume that they were both in the hospital group.

Therefore, as far as I can determine, there were 3 maternal deaths attributable to pregnancy in the entire study, 2 in the homebirth group and one in the hospital group, for a death rate of 2/100,000 in each group. The only one that appears to have been potentially preventable was the one that occurred in the homebirth group. Therefore, the homebirth group had one death that was potentially preventable in the hospital, while the hospital group had none.

The study is underpowered to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference in the death rate between the two groups, but the fact that even one woman in the homebirth group died of a potentially preventable cause means that there is no basis for concluding that homebirth is as safer or safer than hospital birth among the women in this study.

Simply put, the death rate was not zero and until the difference (if any) between maternal deaths at home and in the hospital is determined, we cannot draw any conclusions about the safety of homebirth for Dutch mothers.

A more appropriate conclusions for the study would be:

Low risk women in primary care at the onset of labor with planned home birth had lower rates of severe acute maternal morbidity, but this difference was statistically significant only for parous women. However, there was a potentially preventable death in the homebirth group, while there were no potentially preventable deaths in the hospital group. The study is underpowered to detect a difference in maternal mortality between home and hospital, therefore, no conclusion can be drawn about the safety of homebirth.

Yes, fewer women in the homebirth group experienced severe acute maternal morbidity, but that’s nothing to crow about if one of them died and might have been saved in the hospital.

How big a moron do you have to be to actually pay $450 and attend the Trust Birth Babyslaughterers 2013 Conference?

Evidently, an extraordinarily big moron. Perhaps there is another explanation (and I’d be happy if someone would provide it), but I can’t imagine why anyone would attend a conference staffed by the largest collection of birth criminals in the Southern Hemisphere, besides the obvious reason: terminal stupidity.

What’s a birth criminal (aka babyslaughterer)?

A birth criminal is a midwife who ignores the growing pile of tiny bodies, babies who died preventable deaths as a result of her direct or indirect professional actions.

My view of involuntary babyslaughter is that a newborn death resulting from taking of an unreasonable and high degree of risk should be considered criminally negligent babyslaughter.

I suppose we ought to give homebirth advocates credit for intellectual honesty. It doesn’t matter to them whether babies live or die and they don’t care who knows it. Apparently, babies who die are just collateral damage in the fight for every woman to put her birth experience ahead of her baby’s very life. Apparently the woman who preside over those preventable deaths have information to impart that aspiring babyslaughterers are anxious to hear.

There are quite a few birth criminals/babyslaughterers at the upcoming conference in Sydney.

The list is led by babyslaughterer extraordinaire, Lisa Barrett. Barrett is a one woman crime wave, presiding over no fewer than 5 preventable deaths, as well as practicing midwifery without a license and taking her claim that a baby who born only barely alive as a result of her negligence should be ignored as not a person all the way to the Australian High Court (and losing). Ironically, Lisa Barrett has done more to strengthen regulation of homebirth than homebirth opponents ever could have managed; she has convincingly demonstrated the dangers of homebirth, the irresponsibility of many homebirth midwives, and their preference for myth over scientific evidence.

As the person who alerted me to the conference noted:

She has a number of presentations happening. Two pre-conference workshops – one on breech birth (she is very good at losing breech babies) and the other on “Linguistic and Hypnotic Speech Patterns for the Antenatal and Birth Period” so that others can manipulate their clients as effectively as she does.

As you can see she is (most frighteningly) now “a master practitioner of NLP, Hypnotherapy, Time Line Therapy, and a life coach.”

It seems that the more babies that have died under your care the more conference sessions you get. She is also presenting “”Mapping the Pelvis” – Learn more about the pelvis so that you can “see” how it is that the baby navigates it.”

And finally – “”Hanzoutta: Progress without VEs” – Let’s talk about the ways to predict dilatation without a vaginal exam. Learn how to gauge the rhythm of a woman’s progress through labour without putting your fingers in her vagina”.

Claire Hall, who has no profile on the site, is talking about optimal foetal positioning. Claire wins the prize for most creative attempt at fooling the Coroner’s Court for her claim that a baby who was pronounced dead two days after birth was actually stillborn. The Coroner didn’t believe her.

Janet Fraser occupies a special place in the pantheon of birth criminals, because she let her own baby die. She gets extra points for publicly declaring that her dead baby not as traumatic for her as birth rape. Really? Who would have guessed that her personal experience meant more to her than whether her baby lived or died?

In addition to the babyslaughterers, there is a particularly impressive collection of birth clowns including:

Barbara Harper (Waterbirth: Barbara Harper spreads stupidity)

Joy Jones, “consultant on the subject of the Brewer Diet, and the creator of the “Brewer Pregnancy Diet” website,” perhaps the epitome of birth quacktivism.

and, who can forget Carla Hartley, originator of the psychobabble mantra “Trust Birth.”

So let’s see, a lecturer on breech birth who has presided over an extraordinary number of breech deaths, a lecturer on fetal positioning who apparently can’t tell whether a baby is dead or alive, a woman who let her own baby die, a nitwit who made up the principles of waterbirth, a nitwit who promotes the completely debunked Brewer diet, and Carla Hartley, perhaps the biggest nitwit of them all.

To the morons who are actually paying $450 and attending Trust Birth Babyslaughterers 2013:

Please stop by and let us know why you think you will learn anything useful from a conference of birth criminals who have presided over an extraordinarily large number of babyslaughter deaths. Inquiring minds want to know.

‘I’m not a monster,’ says midwife charged with death of Moab newborn.

Really? What should we call we call her?

• 1983 Charged with practicing medicine without a license in California; pleaded guilty to reduced charges.
• 1993 Presided over the death of a baby at a twin VBA2C in Michigan
• 1993 Claims “They’ll have to cut off my hands to stop me [from delivering babies].”
• 2012 Presided over a neonatal death at homebirth of a VBA3C mother in Utah, administered Cytotec to induce or augment labor, delivered the baby using a vacuum extractor; massive postpartum hemorrhage.

El Halta has been charged:

Valerie ElHalta, 71, was charged in Grand County’s 7th District Court with unlawful conduct, a third-degree felony; and negligent homicide and reckless endangerment, both class A misdemeanors.

Her response:

When contacted at her home Wednesday by KSL News, ElHalta said she was unaware of the charges.

“I’m totally in shock,” she said. “I didn’t hurt the baby. I just delivered it.”…

“I’m not a monster. I’m just a grandmother,” she said Wednesday outside her Eagle Mountain home.

Cue the rally:

Tara Workman Tulley: Midwives and supporters. Regardless of the reasons for Valerie’s arrest, realize this is the second investigation of an unlicensed midwife this year, and the impact could effect every midwife and out-of-hospital birth. Two investigations is likely not an accident. We need a legislative watch group, and a united front of midwives. I will be setting up a GoTo meeting link for this meeting, and recording it. We will have an input period and figure out how to get ourselves united. We stand united and fall divided.

I only have one question. Who is more hideous? El Halta or the homebirth advocates who support her?

For someone who is claiming that her case should be dismissed because of the hardship of litigating in Massachusetts, Gina is doing a lot of litigating in Massachusetts.

She and her lawyer are blizzarding us with motions, even without first conferring with my lawyers, as the rules require.

You may remember that in the last such episode, Gina claimed that BlueHost never took down my blog (Lawsuit update #5: Really?) and that Daringhost did not force me to move my blog because of the DMCA violations (Let’s take a look at the documents).

We were able to immediately produce the relevant documents that showed that the claims were false, AND a screenshot of Gina boasting on her Facebook page that BlueHost took down my site.

Now, they’re back again with yet another motion, this one claiming that Gina had no way of knowing that I lived in Massachusetts at the time she filed the DMCA notice with Daringhost, because my address was blocked on the Whois page back in October 2012.

Once again, the documents tell a very different story.

Gina filed her DMCA notice with Daringhost on 1/21/13.

Here’s a screenshot of the Whois page for skepticalob.com on THE VERY DAY.

And here’s a screenshot of Gina’s Facebook page on THE VERY DAY that she claims she was unaware that I live in Massachusetts.

Gina is asking the court to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds because it is a hardship for her to litigate in Massachusetts and because she did not know that I lived in Massachusetts.

Gina has made it abundantly clear that she has no difficulty litigating in Massachusetts, filing motion after motion after motion in the past 5 months. In addition, she admitted in print that she knew where I lived on the very day that she insists to the court that she did not know.

Very strange.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27713670/Tuteur-20130620_Defendant%27s_Motion_to_Supplement_Record.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27713670/Tuteur-20130620_Opposition_to_Motion_to_Supplement_Record_-_as_filed.pdf