This is a guest post from Doula Dani who asked me for an opportunity to explain some of the history that led up to the purge of the VBACFacts Community.

Hi, I’m Danielle Repp. Online I go by “Doula Dani.” Jen Kamel likes to refer to me as “Robin.”

I am sure you are wondering what is going on and what happened to your online community. You’ve been left in the dark. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that Jen Kamel has left you in the dark – this is just the first time that you know about it.

I’m not sure if you are aware of what happened a couple months ago when Jen Kamel took a completely private conversation between the two of us and shared it for all to see in a blog post, trying her hardest to make me look like a fool and to make herself look good. She was trying to prove a point: non-expert birth bloggers are dangerous.

Jen Kamel herself is a non-expert birth blogger.

What she did was cruel and vindictive and I have no idea why she did what she did.

To give some background… I was writing a piece about VBACs and HBACs for my blog. (linked below) At the end of the blog post, I was hosting a Q&A with an HBAC mom and wanted Jen Kamel to participate as well. Jen Kamel originally said yes, she would participate… but then backed out. I was really bummed when she backed out but had an HBAC-friendly home birth midwife be a part of the Q&A instead. It ended up working out better as the HBAC mom and the midwife knew eachother.

After the piece was finished, I had a VBAC-friendly OB/GYN and a statistics professor review my piece for accuracy. I had made some mistakes so I made the appropriate changes, they reviewed it again, I got the OK and I published it. I sent it to Jen Kamel afterwards for her to see the piece, since originally she was going to be a part of it.

She didn’t like it, to put it mildly. She was clearly upset with what I wrote and how I wrote it. I was upset and incredibly surprised – I had two experts review my piece! At the time, I had no idea what Jen Kamel’s experience/education/training consisted of. I made assumptions… I thought someone who runs a website called “VBAC Facts” would at least be some sort of research expert. I let her walk all over me. It was a humiliating conversation that left me very upset. At one point, because of her insistence, I took down the piece I wrote – a piece that I was very, very proud of. My credibility is important. I would never want to post something that didn’t represent the truth. I don’t have an agenda to promote or protect. I don’t make money from my blog or my stance or anything. All I care about is that women have the (real, truthful) information they need to make informed decisions. I did make some changes based on her suggestions but the truth was, she was never going to be satisfied. She didn’t like what I wrote and especially did not like the information I was sharing regarding HBAC mortality rates.

The conversation ended between Jen Kamel and I. I thought the drama was over with. Until weeks later, Jen Kamel posted a blog sharing our entire conversation!! Our private conversation. Not only did she share the conversation, but she added in little digs and afterthoughts… she tried as hard as she could to make me look horrible. It was so hurtful. She wanted everyone to see that she is the VBAC expert and no one else should be trusted with their VBAC information. I could not believe the low level she stooped to, to try and make me look horrible. (Dr. Tuteur wrote about the whole situation. Relevant links are at the bottom of this post.)

Why didn’t she critique the piece I wrote? Why didn’t she want anyone to read it? She wanted to leave you in the dark. People tried to share the piece on her Facebook page. It was deleted every time.

Just like many pro-home birth sites and Facebook pages, Jen Kamel wants to keep you in the dark. They want information to be shared only in ways that helps their agenda and/or that backs their personal choices. They delete and censor to keep their readers in the dark. You have no idea how often information is censored in the world of home birth. I am a former home birth advocate and I didn’t realize all the deleting and censoring until it happened to me. Being deleted was one of the first major red flags for me. I had experienced and read some troubling things about home birth by that point (of my first deletion) and my head was spinning with questions/concerns…. and then when I asked a question on a blog about one of my concerns, I was deleted…… and then banned. That’s when I really realized I something was very, very wrong. It wasn’t that the outspoken home birth advocates were unknowingly passing around false information…… it was that they were/are intentionally misleading.

It is really a shame. I was not expecting Jen Kamel to do what she did. I couldn’t believe it. Obviously, Jen Kamel and I don’t agree on certain matters. But when I went into it, I was excited that she said yes to participate. I thought she seemed reasonable. I thought she cared about true information over agenda. Clearly, I was wrong.

Now fast forward to all the current drama: someone in her group took screen shots and shared them with Dr. Amy Tuteur. Dr. Tuteur shared them here on her blog.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? Someone was clearly just following in Jen Kamel’s footsteps… sharing information that was private. No, it wasn’t me. And no, I didn’t tell anyone to do it. I can’t lie and say I don’t feel a little bit of justice here… Jen Kamel had someone do to her what she did to me.

What could Jen Kamel have done? She could have let her community know what happened and told them to be careful with what they share – it’s the internet, nothing is ever truly safe. Not even in a secret group.

What did she do instead? She deleted a large number of people from her group. She is only allowing certain people in. She shut out people who need support and looked to the VBAC Facts Community for it. I don’t understand it.

I’m writing this because I want you to see the full picture. I tried to respond to Jen Kamel when she wrote that horrible piece, I wrote a response on Facebook… but she deleted the whole thread shortly after I did respond. I have since been banned from her Facebook page.

I don’t think Jen Kamel is a monster. I don’t think she’s a bad person at all. I think of all pro-home birth sites out there, she did a fairly good job of not getting too extreme. I think she made some snap decisions that she thought were in her best interest… decisions that haven’t been the best for her community and decisions that she likely regrets.

You can read Dr. Tuteur’s piece about the ordeal here.

You can read the piece I wrote about VBACs and HBACs here.

You can read my follow-up piece here, addressing HBAC data sample size.

If you are searching for a new VBAC group to join, a couple of the members from the VBAC Facts Community started a new support group on Facebook, VBAC and Birth After Cesarean Facts — Evidence Based Support.

Be well,
Doula Dani

Your laugh for the day.

I’m touched that someone spent $30 (non-refundable) to reserve a place for me!

Should I go?

Poor Jen Kamel, her credibility and her income are threatened by the truth, so not only must the truth be deleted, but the VBACFacts Community must be purged of anyone who is not ideologically pure.

Unfortunately for Jen, and fortunately for babies and for women who appreciate the truth, her purge is doomed to failure. Why?

1. It is a glaring, blinking, neon lettered, sign of desperation. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that anyone who has to hide what she and her followers write KNOWS that it will not withstand the scrutiny of anyone who is really educated about childbirth.

2. It is a sign of profound disrespect for most women. Jen needs to purge the group down to those who are ignorant, gullible and ideologically pure. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge, intelligence or skepticism need not apply.

3. It dramatically cuts the reach of her views. You can’t convert anyone if you only preach to the choir.

4. It reflects a profound misunderstanding of who forwards screencaps to me. Sure there are regular readers who send me links and screencaps so we can laugh over them, but many of the links and screencaps that I receive come from people who joined the groups as true believers, but are concerned by the dangerous advice and encouragement, and the resulting dead babies that they learn about.

Vetting your group for ideological purity won’t help you, Jen, because what you write and the carnage that results will inevitably turn the stomachs of even some true believers. Perhaps you don’t care whether babies live or die in the pursuit of the vaginal holy grail, but many other women do care about dead babies. Indeed, I received the original screencaps from a long time member of the group who was astounded that no only were uterine ruptures dismissed, and not only were deaths considered irrelevant, but the members of your community are so clueless that they were congratulating themselves on their horrible results.

I have a message for those who were purged from the VBACFacts Community and cannot get back in:

You should be proud of yourselves that Jen cannot come up with evidence that you are ignorant enough, gullible enough and ideologically pure enough to be trusted to swallow the nonsense that Kamel spews. She cannot be sure that you won’t think for yourself, that you won’t do independent research, that you will believe whatever garbage she writes simply because she writes it. That’s a compliment.

So purge away, Jen. You’ve haven’t merely lost a battle; you’ve lost the entire war. Don’t think that I’ve won, though, because I’m not the one who faces preventable death from your vagina fetish. The babies whose lives won’t be lost are the winners when you are forced to hide your faux “facts.” I realize that you think a few dead babies here or there is a small price to pay, but the rest of us don’t agree. Most women love their babies more than the chance to brag about a vaginal birth. Too bad for you.

I’ve been resisting for years, but I must acknowledge that the conclusion is inescapable. I know that I have written repeatedly that it doesn’t matter how you give birth, but spending so much time reading and arguing with birth activists, I feel myself coming around to their way of thinking.

It’s undeniable; I am a Birth Goddess™ and all the birth activists are jealous of me.

I’ve rocked 4 vaginal births, count ’em, one, two, three, four. That’s more than most birth activists can hope for or imagine. Four perfect, joyful, empowering births where I was so closely bonded to my babies prenatally that I was able to ensure that they were all head down, none occiput posterior, none asynclitic, all who simply slipped out without any assistance.

No scalpel, forceps or vacuum were needed, not like those losers who are trying for their VBA4C, still hoping that after doing it wrong so many times, they’ll finally get it right. Sure, they blame the doctor, the nurses, the hospital, just about anyone you can think of except themselves. My obstetrician, nurses and hospital couldn’t have cared less whether I had vaginal births or not, yet I had them anyway. Obviously it is because I am a Birth Goddess™ and the women who wind up with C-sections don’t have what it takes.

No birth affirmations for me. Birth affirmations are for losers. Real women communicate directly with their babies without the need for words.

My four pregnancies were not variations of normal, they were the textbook definition of normal. No pre-eclampsia, no gestational diabetes, no premature rupture of membranes, no Group B strep, no abruptions or cord accidents. My babies weren’t small babies, either. No, my goddess-like pelvis was able to accommodate big babies, bigger than many babies whose mothers had C-sections.

I can’t remember what I ate and I don’t recall exercising at all, but the outcomes make it clear that I ate exactly what was needed and exercised the perfect amount. I took control of my births and they were awesome!

I didn’t skip any test for fear that I wouldn’t pass them, either. I’m a Birth Goddess™ and I passed every test with flying colors.

So why do birth activists argue with me when I explain obstetrics? I did everything they claim is necessary to show that I am a superior mother. Lots of women say they want what’s best for their babies, but didn’t follow through. Unlike them, I actually made it happen.

Why would you get your childbirth information from bloggers who are VBAC activists, who couldn’t manage to give birth swiftly and easily, long before an obstetrician could recommend a C-section that, according to them, wasn’t even necessary in the first place? Why would you get your childbirth information from someone who couldn’t manage to convince her baby to stay head down, or occiput anterior, or couldn’t manage to fit him or her through her pelvis? Why would you get your childbirth information from women who ignored their gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia or group B strep colonization? Shouldn’t you be getting it from someone who successfully avoided all those things?

Let’s face it, all those birth activists who whine about me, rail about me, and tell others not to listen to me are simply jealous of my achievements. I’ve done what most of them have never managed to do. Sure, they might eventually get it right, and have normal test results, babies in the optimal position, and spontaneous vaginal births, but that won’t make up for the fact that they got it wrong in the first place, no matter how many times they subsequently get it right.

If birth activists judge women by whether and how a baby transited their vagina, then they should view me as the acme. I’m the Birth Goddess™ that they aspire to be. Is it any wonder then that they resent me because I couldn’t have cared less how my babies were born and had perfect births while they cared so much and screwed the whole thing up?

I’m a Birth Goddess™, and from here on out, I expect to be worshiped for my innate wisdom as demonstrated by my perfect births. I rocked birth and they didn’t. I win!

 

This piece, though factually correct, is obviously satire.

Oh, the irony!

Its motto is: Don’t Freak. Know the Facts.

You might think, therefore, that Jen Kamel’s website and Facebook page VBACFacts is committed to bringing you all the facts about vaginal birth after Cesarean (VBAC) so that you can make an informed decision. You would be wrong. Kamel is actually committed to bringing you all the facts about VBAC except the most important one; VBAC can and does kill babies and mothers.

The withholding of facts about the dangers of VBAC is intentional. How can we be sure of Kamel’s motivation? Simple, her destruction of evidence is an indication of consciousness of guilt.

Consider Kamel’s quick move to delete the fact that members of adjunct Facebook community have a very high rate of deadly uterine ruptures.

According to Wikipedia:

The spoliation of evidence is the intentional or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, or destroying of evidence …

The theory of the spoliation inference is that when a party destroys evidence, it may be reasonable to infer that the party had “consciousness of guilt” or other motivation to avoid the evidence. Therefore, the factfinder may conclude that the evidence would have been unfavorable to the spoliator.

Yesterday I wrote about that a poll of members of the VBACFacts community revealed a rate of uterine rupture 70% higher than the typically quoted rate. In keeping with the general cluelessness of VBAC activists, community members were actually congratulating each other on their “great” outcomes.

On the VBACFacts Facebook page, they were asked to comment on my post. There were any number of possible responses including acknowledgement of the hideous rupture rate, apologies that the significance was not recognized sooner, disputation of the meaning of the rupture rate, questions about the statistical validity of the poll, etc.

But Kamel and other members of the community offered none of those responses. Instead, Kamel deleted the question making her consciousness of guilt inescapable. Kamel did not dispute my post because she couldn’t. She did not deny the numbers because she couldn’t. She did not argue that the results weren’t hideous because she couldn’t.

She also did not discuss the results and what they mean for women contemplating VBAC. She did not alert the community to the high rate of deadly outcomes that their own survey revealed. In legal terms, she spoliated the evidence, because she recognized that it was unfavorable to her agenda of promoting VBAC and discrediting anyone who disputes the deadly risk of VBAC.

Jen Kamel KNOWS that her own website demonstrates that VBAC is deadly far more often than she acknowledges. She KNOWS that if women were informed of the real dangers of VBAC, they would be far less likely to attempt one. She KNOWS, but she doesn’t want her readers to know the facts, only the facts that she, in her infinite wisdom, believes should be revealed.

And that’s the primary difference between Jen Kamel (and other birth bloggers) and myself. I believe in the intelligence of my readers, not just those who agree with me, but also those who disagree. I believe that they are fully capable of reading and understanding ALL the evidence and drawing valid conclusions. I believe that when given ALL the facts about VBAC, women will make be able to make a truly informed decision. I don’t care what decision they make, just that they make it armed with all the relevant information.

In contrast, Kamel and other birth bloggers believe in the gullibility of their readers. They believe that withholding key facts is somehow ethical, or justified by the agenda of promoting VBAC. They don’t want women to make informed decisions; they want women to make decisions that reinforce and validate the decisions that the bloggers themselves have already made. They are invested in women attempting VBAC in nearly every case, and they will hide the relevant information to ensure that women make the “right” choice, NOT the informed choice.

Those who prefer to reject my claims out of hand have to ask themselves an important question: Do you want to get your facts from someone who respects your intelligence like I do, or do you want to get your “facts” from someone who assumes you are a gullible, easily manipulated fool?

It’s your choice. Think carefully before you answer; your baby’s life may depend on it.

You cannot make this stuff up.

The community at VBACFacts has done a survey of members who attempted vaginal birth after C-section (VBAC) in the past 8 months and they are pretty jazzed about the results.

Indeed, members are encouraged to “enjoy these wonderful results.”

Too bad the results are hideous. Too bad that these women are so clueless that they don’t even realize that the results are hideous.

Yippee!! There were 309 successful VBACs out of 396 attempts, for a success rate of 78%, comparable to the results of large studies of VBAC.

Yippee!! Only 57 additional women opted for an elective repeat C-section.

Yippee!! There were only 5 uterine ruptures …

Oops! That’s bad. That’s a rupture rate of 1.2%. That’s not just bad; that’s hideous. The risk of uterine rupture is generally quoted as about 0.7%. The VBACFacts group has a rate that is 70% higher.

How many of those babies died? Don’t be silly; why would the folks at VBACFacts report an insignificant detail like that? They don’t know, and they don’t care.

What’s most chilling about this is that these fools are congratulating themselves when they should be sounding an alarm. What’s a few dead babies compared to a bunch of successful vaginal deliveries, right?

The VBACFacts community encourages women to take risks, praises them when they dodge a bullet, and ignores the dead babies when they don’t. Why would anyone who cares whether her baby lives or dies get her medical advice from them?

Gina Crosly-Corcoran, The Feminist Breeder, like most natural childbirth/homebirth bloggers is a dangerous clown. A clown because she is so stunningly ignorant that she can’t fathom the depth of her own ignorance, and dangerous because she actually thinks she is knowledgeable. She’s even more dangerous whenever it becomes clear to her that she is wrong yet again; she deletes the evidence, makes no acknowledgement or apology for error, and proceeds as if she hadn’t been shown to be deadly wrong.

Her latest effort at “educating” her followers to her own level of stupidity was Facebook sharing (and then deleting) a piece about nuchal cords (umbilical cords wrapped around the neck). It illustrates so much that is wrong with the claims of natural childbirth advocates, including the habit of deleting evidence when they are wrong instead of acknowledging their mistakes.

1. The natural childbirth community is both an echo chamber and a stupidity amplifier.

Gina, a doula who has worked at a miniscule 20 births, referenced a doula in training, who hasn’t even done that, who quotes an “independent” Australian midwife who claims “the only way I can work to my full scope of practice, and provide the care I believe women deserve is to work as an independent homebirth midwife.” In other words a midwife who believes that she knows better than all the other midwives and obstetricians in Australia. This amplification of ignorance, spewed forth by those who are untrained, poorly trained or have rejected their training, is what passes for “education” among natural childbirth advocates.

2. It contains no scientific evidence of any kind.

What proportion of babies die from nuchal cords? You won’t find that information anywhere because none of the three “geniuses” involved in bringing this nonsense to you has a clue. They don’t tell you that 10-15% of stillbirths are associated with cord problems like nuchal cords and true knots. Without that information, anything they say on the topic is crap.

Gina likes to boast that she is “public health scholar” (instead of what she really is, a student). That makes it all the more mystifying that she appears never to read scientific papers, never quotes the relevant portions, has no inkling of the depth and breadth of the obstetric literature, rarely quotes the relevant statistics, and never performs any kind of analysis of the data that is being discussed. What exactly are they teaching her at her public health program if, after more than a year of classes, she is still incapable of even the most basic analysis?

3. As it typical of most natural childbirth/homebirth “information,” it is a half truth. Not all nuchal cords are dangerous. Only tight nuchal cords are dangerous, but according to what passes for “reasoning” in the natural childbirth community, if 100% of nuchal cords don’t end in death, then 0% of nuchal cords are dangerous. It’s the equivalent of claiming that since not buckling your seatbelt doesn’t have a 100% death rate (or anywhere close), not buckling your seatbelt is therefore safe and that anyone who suggests you should buckle your seatbelt is a fearmongerer.

4. It exploits the ignorance of basic physiology among natural childbirth avatars and their followers. Lauren Pace Specht, the nitwit who shared this piece originally thinks she is being snarky when she writes:

Nobody seems to realize that fetuses aren’t breathing through their necks, so it really doesn’t matter if the cord is looped around it. It’s not “choking” them as people envision.

Duh. No obstetrician is worried about nuchal cords because they believe a fetus breathes through their trachea (“neck”). The problem is not that the baby’s neck is compressed, the problem is that the baby’s cord, which is functioning as an air hose, is compressed. Imagine that you were breathing through an air hose with a knot in it wrapped around your neck. If the knot cuts off the supply of air, it doesn’t matter whether or not your neck is compressed; you’ll die for lack of oxygen. Specht isn’t snarky. She is clueless.

5. The ignorant reference the ignorant. When multiple people pointed out to Gina that she has no idea what she is talking about, she referred to information she got from other doulas who are as ignorant as she is.

6. Babies may die from the “education” provided by ignorant fools like Gina, and she will never face any responsibility for those deaths. The most important practical difference between obstetricians and “birth workers” is that the former bear responsibility for the information they present, while the latter face no consequence for themselves. Does Gina plan to take any responsibility for the incredible stupidity that dribbles from her pen? Of course not.

To summarize, Gina, the righteously ignorant, spouts deadly misinformation that exploits the lack of basic physiology knowledge among her followers, depends on a half truth, references other equally clueless natural childbirth advocates, and could lead to the death of your baby. And when she finally recognizes that she is completely and utterly wrong, she deletes the post without acknowledging her mistake.

Does Gina care that she is transmitting and amplifying stupidity? Of course not. In her ignorance, she is PROUD of herself. Does she plan to take any blame if a baby dies from the misinformation that she regularly conveys?

Absolutely not. You can bet your baby’s life on it.

Brainwashing is integral to cult membership. Hence the last person I would ask if they belonged to a cult is a member. That’s why Brandy Zandrozny is not a reliable reporter on the cult of natural childbirth.

You may remember Brandy from an apologia for the terrible MANA homebirth statistics that she wrote for The Daily Beast in February. Now Brandy is back on the case with a new piece, Natural Childbirth is Not a Cult. Zadrozny is responding to a piece by Elissa Strauss at The Week. In discussing the unassisted childbirth reality TV show, Strauss makes the point, correctly in my view, that “the cult of natural childbirth has gone too far.”

To determine who is correct, we should start by considering the definition of a cult. According to Google, a cult is:

a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.

In the case of natural childbirth, the object of veneration is unmedicated childbirth without interventions. Unmedicated vaginal birth is understood by cult members to be venerated with trust, worshipped with affirmations, and often viewed as more important that the ostensible purpose of childbirth, a live, healthy baby.

Natural childbirth, like most cults, has its own mythology, in this case a mythology that is both racist and sexist. The cult was started by Grantly Dick-Read, author of Childbirth Without Fear, and a eugenicist who was preoccupied with visions of “race suicide” as non-white people became an ever larger part of the population of first world countries. Dick-Read thought that white women of the “civilized” races were being diverted by the quest for economic and political equality, when they really should be home spitting out babies. He believed that it was fear of the excruciating pain of labor that discourage these women from having more children. He fabricated out of whole cloth the bizarre notion that “primitive” (read: black) women gave birth without pain because they didn’t fear childbirth and understood that their primary role was to reproduce.

To this day, natural childbirth advocates fantasize that they are emulating exotic brown foreigners and becoming better at birth than they are themselves. There is no historical basis to the claim that unmedicated vaginal birth is safest, and no scientific basis for the claim that it is superior in any way to childbirth with pain relief. No matter; cult membership requires belief regardless of inconvenient facts.

Zadrozny roll out all the cult tropes of natural childbirth as if that proves it isn’t a cult:

• Childbirth is not a contest, but it is “a defining moment” in the lives of many women
• Natural childbirth doesn’t mean rejection of care. It means care with a mother-focused doctor or midwife, sometimes in a place other than a hospital
• Many mothers cite safety as the reason for drug-free births, fearing a cascade of interventions like induction, synthetic hormones to speed labor, vaginal cutting, and caesarean section.
• One out of every three births in the U.S. is a cesarean section (as if this is somehow an indication that natural childbirth is better).

Zadrozny does not recognize the irony of vehemently denying the competitive nature of natural childbirth and the use of guilt to keep followers in line and non-followers second guessing their mothering skills, and then boasting:

My own son was born in a hospital without pain medication. I had the help of a midwife, a doula, and my husband. It was painful, sure, but it was agony with an end. I wasn’t vehemently against epidurals. I had done the math and decided if I wanted to be on my feet, during and quickly after the birth (a quarter of mothers who have caesareans describe (PDF) at least “quite a bit” of interference with routine activities in the two months after birth compared with 9 percent of mothers with a vaginal birth), if I wanted to avoid a catheter and major surgery, if I wanted to be out of the hospital and home with my babe sooner than later, it would be best to manage as much of the event as I could on my own.

QED, Brandy, QED.

Brandy ends with this admonition:

Rather than demonize the natural child birth movement, Lifetime, or these “extreme” mothers, let’s ask what has caused them to completely reject the system and figure out a way to make birth—wherever a woman chooses to do it—as safe as possible. Maybe we can even improve the current system so that laboring mothers feel more comfortable going to a hospital than into a forest.

Umm, Brandy, you seem to have missed the point of Strauss’ piece entirely. We know what causes them to completely reject the system: the worship of unmedicated vaginal birth, the veneration of “trusting birth,” the lies about the dangers of “interventions, and the lies about the health benefits of refusing those interventions.

In short, the cult of natural childbirth.

They’ve existed since before the advent of recorded human history.

They rely on ancient women’s wisdom and herbal preparations.

If they weren’t safe, the human species would no longer exist.

They provide a service that many women want.

Women know their own bodies. If women feel they are safe, then they are safe.

Am I talking about homebirth midwives or back alley abortionists? Can’t tell the difference, can you?

If we are licensing homebirth midwives (CPMs, LMs), why shouldn’t we license back alley abortionists, too? After all, it takes less education and training to end a pregnancy than to bring it to a successful conclusion.

Many women want the service that back alley abortionists provide. Moreover, it is dogma in the world of homebirth that if women feel safe, they are safe. Does that make back alley abortionists safe?

Of course not!

We know that back alley abortionists are deadly. Before the advent of safe surgical abortions, women died in droves attempting to end unwanted pregnancies. Even today, when women don’t have access to safe surgical abortion, they continue to die in droves. The reliance on ancient women’s wisdom and herbal preparations leads to serious illness and death. Even so, the deadly results at the hands of back alley abortionists have had no impact on whether our species exists; a tremendous number of women can die before population growth slows or stops.

So why shouldn’t we license back alley abortionists? Try to think of a reason that doesn’t apply equally to American homebirth midwives. You’ll be hard pressed to do so.

American homebirth advocacy is all about mistruths, half truths and outright lies. That’s pretty obvious when it comes to the blatant lie that homebirth is as safe as hospital birth, the blatant lie that childbirth interventions kill women and babies, and the blatant lie that obstetricians don’t follow scientific evidence. Therefore, homebirth advocates are increasingly applying their mistruths, half truths and outright lies to claims about women’s reproductive freedom.

Consider the following quote from Gina Crosley-Corcoran, The Feminist Breeder:

Anyone reading it might think that women are prevented from giving birth where they want and attended by whom they want. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are no restrictions, have never been any restrictions, nor will there ever be any restrictions on women choosing to give birth at home. Want to risk your baby’s life at homebirth? Go right ahead; no one will stop you. The restrictions that exist apply only to who can call herself a midwife, what training a midwife might need, and who can charge for providing midwifery services. But when you are trying to scare women, a lie is ever so much better than the truth.

And when it comes to lies, there’s none much bigger than this whopper, also courtesy of Gina.

While I appreciate the implicit acknowledgement that homebirth is far more dangerous than hospital birth, I find the underlying premise to be moronic. Just because a woman thinks something is safe does not make it safe. This is a classic example of the magical thinking that animates the “reasoning” of so many homebirth advocates. Magical thinking does not refer to magic; rather it refers to the belief that one’s thoughts have the power to change reality. For example, a small child may imagine that the reason his sister fell down and hurt herself is because he was angry at her and wished that something bad would happen.

You might think that the adults in the homebirth movement would have matured beyond magical thinking, but you would be wrong. Magical thinking (in the form of beliefs and birth affirmations) rests on the premise that grown women can change reality with their thoughts. Hence Gina’s extraordinarily inane claim that “the safest choice for any women is what SHE feels is right for her body.”

Really?

If a woman believes that smoking is the safest choice for her, does that make it safe? No.

If a woman believes that not using a seatbelt is the safest choice for her, does that make it safe? Of course not.

If a woman believes that a back alley abortionist is a safe healthcare provider, does that make back alley abortion safe. Obviously not.

I bet you can see where this is going:

If a woman believes that a homebirth midwife is a safe healthcare provider, does that make homebirth safe? Only a fool would think it does.

The idea that the choice to have homebirth is an issue of reproductive freedom makes as much sense as claiming that the choice to have a back alley abortion is an issue of reproductive freedom, in other words, no sense at all.

But as the evidence mounts that American homebirth midwives have an extraordinarily high rate of deadly outcomes, the reproductive freedom argument is looking like a much better bet than the safety argument.

What’s the difference between an American homebirth midwife and a back alley abortionist?

Absolutely nothing.

I’ve written many times before that the philosophy of natural childbirth is based on racist, sexist claims, and exploits women of color.

I’ve just learned a new word that perfectly captures the racism of natural childbirth advocacy. The word is whitesplain’.

As Arthur Chu explains in an awesomely title piece in the Daily Beast, Who Died and Made You Khaleesi?:

Mansplaining, whitesplaining, richsplaining—the way you can tell someone who’s ‘privileged’ is the unconscious belief that they have something to say, and that everyone will listen.

Chu is not writing about natural childbirth, but he could be:

We repeatedly tell stories about a white protagonist who goes on a journey of self-discovery by mingling with exotic brown foreigners and becoming better at said foreigners’ culture than they themselves are.

That accurately sums up natural childbirth advocates fantasizing that they are emulating exotic brown foreigners and becoming better at birth than they are themselves, and homebirth midwives heading to countries filled with exotic brown foreigners so they can practice and learn on them before returning to care for wealthy white women.

Chu is brutally honest:

The frustrating thing about being annoyed by the Mighty Whitey trope—and there are a ton of people upset— is that it’s so frequently employed by the well-meaning “good guys.” The whole point of “going native” is that the familiar Western civilization is portrayed as inauthentic, ugly, broken, flawed. The “exotic” foreign civilization is somehow more natural, more primal, more sensual, the way people really ought to live.

That’s a perfect characterization of the natural childbirth movement, complete with Mighty Whiteys like Grantly Dick-Read who claimed that “primitive” women don’t have pain in childbirth, or Ina May Gaskin who is constantly invoking the supposed “sexuality” of birth in nature.

Why?

Is it just that we get sick of living in modern society with McDonald’s and McMansions and mandatory vaccinations so we develop intricate fantasies about how much better life would be if we had to hunt our own food, build our own shelter, and develop our own resistance to dangerous microorganisms?

When it comes to natural childbirth, the answer to that question is a resounding “Yes!”

Natural childbirth is whitesplainin’ at its most self-absorbed. The Mighty Whiteys who run the natural childbirth movement (as well as the lactivist movement and the attachment parenting movement) believe that they have something to say and that the rest of us, particularly women of color, ought to be grateful that they deign to share their “wisdom.” They create appalling racial stereotypes like the one at the heart of the new reality show about unassisted childbirth. The show featuring a woman who gives birth outdoors by a stream on her yoga mat, as if any indigenous women ever did anything remotely approaching such a stunt. They are forever bemoaning the high rate of black maternal mortality or the low rate of black breastfeeding while doing precisely nothing to ameliorate the root conditions that lead to poor outcomes for black mothers and babies.

At the heart of natural childbirth, from its inception to this day is the elaborate, racist fantasy that life would be so much better if we could just emulate our “primitive” ancestors; in other words, whitesplainin’ at its finest.