The Skeptical OB

The birth community is buzzing with news of a $16 million dollar judgement in an Alabama obstetric case. According to the Yahoo article Mom Who Sued Hospital for Traumatic Birth Wins $16 Million by Beth Greenfield: [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The jury did not find anyone guilty of obstetric violence.[/pullquote] Malatesta was 32 […]

A friend sent me a link to a new blog post on Fearless Parenting. Once I stopped laughing after reading it, I was struck by the fact that, as is often the case, no sooner do I write a post then a homebirth advocate rushes to illustrate it. Yesterday I wrote about 10 things that […]

Poor Kelly! Not only was treated disrespectfully by her obstetrician, but she’s been endlessly exploited by the folks at ImprovingBirth.org who have used her story to raise their own public profile while doing NOTHING to help Kelly. You may remember when I wrote last fall about the exploitation (What has Improving Birth done for the […]

Poor Hermine Hayes-Klein. She came to this blog to call my bluff and instead I called hers. She’s been dealing with the ugly fallout ever since. And in doing so, Hayes-Klein has exposed not one, but two human rights scandals at Human Rights in Childbirth. The rest of the professional natural childbirth and homebirth advocates […]

Talk about bad timing! Kim Lock has an opinion piece on obstetric violence in Australia’s Daily Life, on the same day that the Australian media is discussing yet another inquest into yet another series of homebirth deaths. According to Lock: A horrifying video recently appeared in my news feed. Earlier this year in California, during […]

ICAN, the International Cesarean Awareness Network, is the premier organization promoting vaginal birth after Cesarean (VBAC). ICAN has taken the lead in advocating for VBAC in nearly every circumstance, opposing VBAC restrictions put in place by hospitals and malpractice insurers, and arguing that principles of bodily autonomy mean that women should be able to force […]

Imagine that you’ve taken a job babysitting 7 year old twins. Each time you’ve babysat, they have been more difficult to supervise. They run riot through the house breaking things and then begging you to fix them before their parents get home. The final straw, though, was when you went to check on them playing […]

Over the past few days, in the wake of the UK decision to promote homebirth, I’ve looked at several reasons why the effort to promote homebirth over hospital birth is unethical. First, in a system struggling with staff shortages, lack of supervision of midwives, poor outcomes, and exorbitant insurance expenditures, it is defies logic to […]

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that Big Pharma has invented a new pain reliever, Fly-ox. Fly-ox is terrific. It provides excellent pain relief to many who didn’t like standard pain medications, and patients are singing its praises. Fly-ox is such a big seller that it becomes a major source of […]

Please join me in a big round of applause for Abel Andrews, Superhero!!! Many small children dream of being superheroes, but Abel really is one. Even at his young age, Abel has saved lives and will continue to do so far into the future. Who is Abel and how did he come to be a […]