Before Natalie Krueger even became pregnant with her second child, a boy named Callahan, she knew she wanted to give birth at home. She’d had a hospital birth with her first child, Sawyer, that didn’t go how she envisioned.
Initially, Krueger planned to have a midwife attend the second birth.
“It wasn’t until my pregnancy with Cal that I realized how difficult that would actually be,” Krueger said.
Krueger lives in Osmond, a rural town in northeast Nebraska less than an hour from the South Dakota border. Laws in Nebraska make it illegal in some instances to give birth at home with a midwife. Krueger said at the time of the birth, there were only two midwives who served her area. She hired one.
Krueger is a doula. Doulas support parents emotionally through pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. They are not medical professionals. During her pregnancy, Krueger shared a client with the midwife she hired for her own birth.
“When I was about 20 weeks pregnant with him, I attended a home birth where she was the midwife,” Krueger said. “During that birth, I pretty quickly realized that she was not the right fit for me.”
Krueger decided to give birth at home without the help of a midwife. At the time, she said, she didn’t realize the other midwife served her area.
When a person intentionally has a baby without the aid of a medical professional, it’s called a free birth or unassisted birth. Free birth is controversial and relatively rare. But it has gained traction online from social media influencers who promote it.
Experts say freebirth is dangerous and potentially deadly. But supporters say unassisted birth is misunderstood.
Caitlin Linscheid is an OB-GYN in the Kansas City area. She said some of the most common emergencies during birth are shoulder dystocia, when a baby’s head is born but a shoulder is stuck, or postpartum hemorrhage, when a person rapidly loses blood after birth.
“You can lose liters of blood in mere minutes and go from being perfectly fine to bleeding to death,” Linscheid said. “If you don’t have access to a physician or a medically trained midwife who can intervene urgently, then that can be a life-threatening situation.”
Health officials don’t track free birth, but home birth in Iowa, Kansas and Missouri has increased in recent years.
More Americans born at home, but number of free births remains unknown
While still a minority of all births, the total number of home births increased across several states.
| Location | 2020 home births | 2021 home births | Percent change |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 45,646 | 51,642 | 13% |
| Illinois | 998 | 1,155 | 16% |
| Iowa | 578 | 683 | 18% |
| Kansas | 545 | 642 | 18% |
| Missouri | 1,309 | 1,403 | 7% |
| Nebraska | 108 | 99 | −8% |
Latest data available
Table: Daniel Wheaton | Midwest Newsroom
Source: CDC Get the data Created with Datawrapper
Natalie’s story
Pierce County, where Krueger lives, lacks access to maternity care. The March of Dimes, a nonprofit that focuses on infant and maternal health, defines it as a maternity care desert, meaning the county doesn’t have a birthing facility or obstetrician. According to the March of Dimes, people in 1 in 3 U.S. counties don’t have access to maternity care. Most of these counties are rural and located in the Midwest and South.
For her first birth in 2020, Krueger opted for a hospital birth. Because her hometown hospital doesn’t have a labor and delivery unit, she traveled to Yankton, South Dakota, about 45 minutes away. At 40 weeks, she had an afternoon appointment. The doctor told her to come back in the evening for an induction.
“I ended up staying in town because it was January, and we were afraid there was going to be a snowstorm coming in,” Krueger said. “So I ended up laboring in a Walmart and a restaurant.”
Krueger said she didn’t need an induction because her labor progressed on its own. She said she hoped to avoid an epidural, but she felt pressured into one from her labor and delivery nurse.
Overall, Krueger said the birth wasn’t traumatic and went smoothly.
“It was just that I had hoped for an unmedicated experience,” Krueger said.
She said her husband felt out of place, and the constant rotation of nurses coming in and out of the room was less than ideal.
“Privacy is more important to me than I first realized it was,” Krueger said. “I was really uncomfortable meeting new people in labor and then having to trust those people to take care of me.”
This experience is why she opted for a home birth the second time around. Krueger’s husband was anxious about a home birth, so she agreed to hire a midwife.
Nebraska has some of the strictest midwifery laws in the country. It’s the only state where it is a felony for certified nurse midwives, or CNMs, to attend home births. CNM is one of the highest levels of midwifery education. They are registered nurses who typically hold an undergraduate degree in nursing and a graduate degree in nurse midwifery. They’re the only type of midwife recognized by Nebraska law.
Regulating CNMs created a loophole that allowed other classifications of midwives with less education to attend home births. Other types of midwives include Certified Professional Midwives, or CPMs, and lay midwives. CPMs aren’t required to have a nursing degree. They train through accredited midwifery schools and apprenticeship programs. Lay midwives, also called traditional midwives, are not certified and typically train through apprenticeships.
A Nebraska Supreme Court ruling in 2024 closed the loophole, ruling midwives can’t practice without a license. Both CNMs and CPMs in the state are advocating to remove restrictions from the practice. Krueger said she knows of unlicensed midwives who were prosecuted for attending home births. She said this forces midwives to go “underground,” which she thinks makes out-of-hospital birth in the state more dangerous.
“We’re kind of forced to either choose an underground midwife and really keep quiet about it because it’s not like we can crowdsource for opinions or experiences because then we’re putting her name out there and that’s a huge risk to her,” she said. “Or we’re forced to give birth without a midwife.”
In 2023, after Krueger dismissed her midwife, she gave birth to Callahan in her living room with her mom, mother-in-law, friend, son, husband and a photographer in attendance. She said the labor was a lot shorter than her first birth.
“My second birth was like the most perfect birth,” Krueger said. “If I could give birth and I knew that it was going to go like that every time, I would have 10 kids.”
This year, Krueger had her second free birth with the arrival of her daughter, Aurora, in April. She said it was not as smooth as her first free birth. Krueger said from the start of her pregnancy, she sensed it was going to be a difficult labor.
“I actually went back and forth about maybe I just needed to be at the hospital, but I felt so unsafe with the idea of going to the hospital,” she said.
Krueger said she was afraid she would be pushed into unwanted interventions or touched without her consent in the hospital. She said a traumatic experience as a child makes her uncomfortable with being touched without notice.
The labor was long and painful. Krueger suspected Aurora was face up, which typically leads to a more difficult labor. She said she went to the hospital to make sure the baby was OK and that she was progressing. A nurse midwife confirmed the baby was face up and strongly recommended Krueger stay at the hospital given how far into labor she was.
But Kreuger returned home after signing an Against Medical Advice form that hospitals ask patients to sign if they choose to leave the facility before they’re cleared to. When the baby finally crowned, her cord was wrapped around her neck. Krueger said she lifted it over Aurora’s head, and then she was born.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, an umbilical cord wrapped around a baby’s neck (also called a “nuchal cord”) rarely causes complications but needs to be removed during delivery so the baby doesn’t lose oxygen or blood supply. Krueger said she was ready for this scenario, as well as several others.
“I did a lot of planning for emergencies with her. I made my husband watch specific videos,” she said.
Krueger said she and her husband learned from a respiratory therapist how to revive a newborn and discussed what would constitute calling an ambulance to transport them to the local hospital a few blocks away. Krueger said her role as a birth worker and the dozens of births she has attended also helped her prepare.
But Caitlin Linscheid, the Kansas City-area OB-GYN, said regardless of how much a person plans, birth can be unpredictable. She said obstetric emergencies can happen quickly and sometimes need immediate intervention to save the baby and mother’s lives.
“Even though it’s a natural process (birth), it doesn’t always go smoothly, it doesn’t always go well,” Linscheid said. “I think because interventions happen in a hospital, it’s tempting to think that the hospital caused it. But I think in a lot of these cases, there was something else at play that was beyond either the hospital or the doctor or the patient.”
Linscheid said her own birth story is the reason she decided to become an OB-GYN. After moving to a new state, her parents couldn’t find a hospital provider they were comfortable with, she said.
“My mom talks about meeting a series of physicians who didn’t listen to her, who talked down to her, and ultimately in her attempt to take the best care of herself and of me, she decided to have a home birth with a midwife,” she said.
Linscheid said the midwife her mother hired was not medically trained (these are called lay midwives). Her mom had a long labor and ended up hemorrhaging. Linscheid said her mom recovered.
But she said her birth story stuck with her.
“I found myself really wanting to be the doctor that she should have had access to,” Linscheid said. “As OB-GYNs, historically, we haven’t listened to our patients and we haven’t given them the space and the respect that they deserve. We need to own that and reflect on how we ended up losing our way.”
Linscheid said in her own practice, she uses a trauma-informed approach and treats patients like experts on their own lived experiences. She said sometimes when people don’t feel listened to or respected by doctors, they look for care outside of the medical system.
Judgment faced by people who free birth
For Krueger and others who chose free birth, judgment from others is part of it. Krueger said people often automatically assume that parents are being reckless and putting their children’s lives in danger.
“But they have not witnessed the things that many of us have witnessed, especially birthworkers, when you’re getting care at the hospital or from a midwife,” Krueger said. “And not to say that those providers are doing anything wrong or bad, but the stories in hospitals of things going wrong are often glossed over.”
Krueger said people also often assume that people who give birth unassisted refuse all medical care, even in life-threatening situations. Krueger said this isn’t true. She said many people who free birth, herself included, receive prenatal care and would go to the emergency room if they needed to.
“There’s nobody in this situation in a birth at all who cares more about the outcome of the birth than the mother,” Krueger said. “If a mom is choosing unassisted birth, it’s because they truly think that that is the safest route for them and their baby.”
Chalé’s story
Chalé Turner agrees with Krueger. She said many of the women she knows who give birth without a medical professional are highly educated.
“For me, a free birth is a woman taking that ultimate control and autonomy over her birth,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to seek assistance, it doesn’t mean that they’re just like, ‘I’m staying home, no matter what.’”
Turner lives in Topeka, Kansas, with her five young children. She gave birth to four of them unassisted. She said she always knew she wanted to give birth at home because her grandfather was born at home (her own mom couldn’t have a home birth because of underlying health issues). Turner had her first child, a boy named Sadrien, in 2016.
“We had the midwife, the doula, like the whole 9 yards. And it was a really great experience,” she said. “I had a very low-risk, non-complicated pregnancy.”
Turner learned about unassisted birth from her doula. She said her doula gave birth to her own kids unassisted.
“I started deep-diving into free birth with my second pregnancy and I just couldn’t get enough after that, I guess,” she said.
Turner gave birth to her second baby, a girl named Soraya, at home unassisted. She said the baby came really fast.
“I experienced more like early labor or prodromal labor over days and weeks and then all of a sudden, I’m in active labor and there’s a baby,” she said. “So that’s really fun. But also kind of part of my decision to stay home.”
For Turner, her identity also played a role in her decision to give birth unassisted. Turner’s father is Black and her mother is white and Ojibwe.
“My weariness of hospitals and the medical system doesn’t come from nowhere,” Turner said. “It comes from being a person of color, from being a Black person and having very Black parent, you know, a Black father and very proud Black grandparents who saw the Civil Rights Movement.”
Turner said in her mom’s indigenous culture, birth is viewed as a ceremony. She said free birth to her is a way of honoring that.
“For me it’s a way to protect them (the baby) and an act of love,” Turner said. “A family member being the first hands to touch them and care for them is really important to me.”
Turner runs a Facebook page for people in Kansas who are considering or chose free birth. She also works as a postpartum doula and is working toward becoming an international board certified lactation consultant.
Turner said she never pushes anyone to have an unassisted birth.
“I can only share my experience or kind of point you in the right direction,” she said. “I could never give you that answer. I’m like, ‘Only you can answer that question.’”
Turner said preparing for a free birth safely takes a lot of work. She said she spent months preparing for her births and creating safety plans — and that’s not something someone wanting a free birth should outsource.
Turner said in recent years, she has seen disturbing content from influencers promoting free birth. Turner was part of the Free Birth Society Facebook page, a group exposed by The Guardian for its connection to multiple infant deaths worldwide.
Turner said she saw in real time members from the group advising a pregnant person who needed emergency medical care to stay home. She said she believes the woman’s baby was later stillborn.
Turner said groups like the Free Birth Society (which is still active, though the original Facebook page was shut down), stigmatize unassisted birth and can be a dangerous influence on women considering giving birth without a medical professional.
“I’ve kind of shied away from saying I’m like a free birth advocate. Because it’s not for everyone, and I don’t think it should be for everyone,” she said. “Everybody is different and unique and special, and their circumstances are different.”
Free birth and social media
Even with preparation, free births can be disastrous. Australian wellness influencer Stacey Warnecke died last September after giving birth at home without the assistance of a medical professional. She hemorrhaged, and according to an inquest into the death, Warnecke declined an ambulance twice before agreeing to one.
Emily Lal, a woman connected to the Free Birth Society, attended the birth as a “birth keeper.” Birth keepers are unregulated birth workers who do not have medical training.
And for families who don’t prepare, risks are even higher. In 2020 and 2022, two Iowa couples were charged in connection with the deaths of their newborns. Both babies were born at home unassisted and both families reportedly avoided medical care because of substance use issues.
This type of unassisted birth adds to the stigma other mothers are trying to dispel.
In Nebraska, influencer Abbey Khopesh abundantly posts content about her free births to her thousands of followers. Khopesh gave birth to both of her children unassisted and did not receive prenatal care. Her most recent birth, a boy, was born last month. She posted updates leading up to the birth.
Khopesh received a lot of criticism online. Despite her content about the advantages of unassisted and out of hospital birth, Khopesh said in multiple posts that she does not recommend free birth for other women.
In an Aug. 19 Instagram post, she said she believes every woman is capable by design to give birth unassisted. But …
“It’s not for the faint of heart. You’re throwing all of your cards to the gods,” Khopesh said. “I am not trying to discourage women from doing this. I love to see it. But I’m also not going to sit here and advocate that everybody can and should do it.”
Destiny’s story
Destiny Abercrombie, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, is training to be a birth assistant with a local home birth midwife and works as a certified lactation counselor. She had an unassisted birth a couple of years ago with her son.
Abercrombie said she does not recommend free birth to her clients. “I don’t suggest it at all because I feel like if it’s not like a conviction, like if you don’t feel called to do it, just go to the hospital or call a midwife, please,” Abercrombie said. “It’s not for everybody.”
Abercrombie has four children. Her first, a boy, was born in a hospital. She said the birth was overall pretty smooth, but she was induced and felt pressured into getting an epidural — interventions she didn’t want.
“I had a birth plan that they said they would follow, but they really ignored,” Abercrombie said. “But ultimately, I would say for a hospital birth, it was a fair experience.”
For her second son, Abercrombie gave birth in a hospital birth center with the help of a certified nurse midwife. Hospital-affiliated birth centers are typically staffed by CNMs and offer a more home-like experience. The one Abercrombie gave birth in closed last year. Abercrombie said that after the birth, she felt uncomfortable because the room was very cold and doctors and nurses kept coming in. For her third baby, a girl, she opted for a home birth with a midwife. She said it went well.
When Abercrombie became pregnant with her last child, another boy, her life was different. She was going through a divorce. Abercrombie said she couldn’t afford a midwife for a home birth, so she considered returning to the hospital birth center.
“I really felt like I was selling myself short,” she said. “I felt like I was really just relinquishing all the power that I could have.”
Abercrombie opted for a free birth. She said she researched and prepared a lot, including learning how to resuscitate a newborn. Her mom, two of her sisters and a close friend attended the birth. Abercrombie said it went smoothly until it was time to deliver the placenta. She said she couldn’t deliver it, and she started to hemorrhage. Abercrombie instructed her family to call 911 and then passed out.
After a treatment and a brief hospital stay, Abercrombie made a full recovery. But she said if she would have listened to the advice in Facebook groups advocating for free birth, things may have been different.
“Had I not done as much research, had I never been to a birth, if I didn’t feel like I had the capacity to recognize when it’s time to transfer and things like that, it could have ended a lot worse,” Abercrombie said.
Abercrombie is a Black woman, and she said while her race didn’t play a role in her decision to free birth, it did play a role in how she approached all of her births.
“I think being Black changes the way the medical system interacts with me,” she said. “Being Black definitely played a part in how I chose all of my births.”
Abercrombie said for her free birth, she was careful to get prenatal care and document all of it, so she wasn’t flagged for being medically negligent. She said she took her youngest son to a children’s hospital shortly after birth to check out a possible infection. The hospital started administering antibiotics before test results were available, she said, and she asked a doctor why.
Abercrombie said the doctor reported her to Child Protective Services. She said she felt like her race played a role in that call.
“I absolutely had no control in that situation,” she said. “So that’s kind of where it was like, I want to avoid the hospital because I wanted to avoid that.”
Abercrombie said racial disparities are one reason she is pursuing a career as a birth worker. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, maternal mortality rates for Black women are 3.5 times higher than for white women.
“As much as birth does need to be reformed in the states, the solution is not free birth,” she said. “I think the solution would be more education.”
Tara’s story
Tara Webber gave birth unassisted in August. Webber and her partner, Kyle Baker, live in Sioux City, Iowa. Webber said she was born at home with a midwife.
“I watched my birth video and kind of looked up to that my whole life,” she said. “I really wanted to do a water birth specifically, but I also wanted the comfort of my own home and not to be rushed around a hospital and told that I have to stay at a hospital with my newborn.”
But Webber, 20, said she couldn’t find a midwife who would help with a home birth in her area. Her next plan was to go to a freestanding birth center, but the nearest one was almost an hour away. She said she ended up deciding against the birth center because of the long drive and because it was cost-prohibitive.
“I couldn’t imagine doing contractions in the car for 45 minutes when our hospital, if I really need anything, is 10 minutes away,” Webber said.
Webber said she was wary of a hospital birth because of bad experiences she had with a previous health issue. She said she wouldn’t be opposed to it if there were a medical reason she needed to deliver in a hospital, but because her pregnancy was healthy and uncomplicated, she felt comfortable giving birth at home.
Ultimately, Webber and Baker decided she would get prenatal care at a clinic and then hire a doula and have a home birth. Because doulas are not medical professionals, some people who chose to free birth still enlist the help of a doula.
Baker said that, at first, he was scared by the prospect of Webber having their baby at home without a midwife present.
“I’ve never had a baby myself, and I haven’t really seen too many births,” he said.
After a long labor and a trip to the emergency room to see how she was progressing, Webber got the water birth at home that she wanted. Webber’s mom flew in from California, and the couple said her support and the doula’s support enabled them to have a home birth.
After the birth, Webber said, she struggled to birth the placenta and lost a lot of blood. She asked the doula to pull the placenta out.
“I can’t do it myself, and I’m not going to the hospital just for this,” Webber said.
Webber said it took about two hours to deliver the placenta. Medical professionals recommend the placenta is delivered 30 minutes to an hour post-birth.
Webber said she ended up being OK and going to the hospital later to have herself and the baby evaluated.
“While it doesn’t give me a peace of mind to be surrounded by doctors and to be in a medical setting, it still gives me a peace of mind to have medical access and to have somebody that knows medicine to tell me that everything’s going all right,” Webber said.
Webber said she would free birth again, but she would prefer a midwife the next time.
“A midwife would definitely ease my peace of mind, but I would do an unassisted birth with a doula again,” she said.
Baker said he sees both sides of the free birth debate.
“I think the main thing is, unassisted births are scary, but they’re great. But you definitely want a support system around you,” Baker said. “I couldn’t imagine doing it without any family or without a doula or anybody.”
In Dr. Linscheid’s view, the hospital is the safest place to give birth.
Linscheid said in parts of Europe, it’s common for medically trained midwives to attend home births. But she said the U.S. doesn’t have the same access to specialized hospitals for transfers and training and support for midwives.
“So I hesitate to endorse a home birth, whether it be unassisted or assisted, just because we don’t have the infrastructure to make sure that that’s a safe option for patients,” she said. “When emergencies do happen, they happen quickly and they can be truly catastrophic.”
But Linscheid said doctors need to get better at listening to women and their birth plans.
“Because they want to feel empowered and they want to feel heard,” Linscheid said. “And I think it’s 100% possible to feel empowered, heard, autonomous and strong in a hospital setting, but that requires that we as providers show up and are committed to making that a reality.”
What the data says
Free birth is hard to track. There are no clear numbers from health officials. Unassisted birth happens accidentally sometimes, like when a person gives birth on the way to the hospital. And health officials do not track whether a home birth was intentional or attended by a medical professional.
Home births in general, however, are easier to collect data on. According to a release from the CDC, home births reached the highest level since at least 1990 in 2021, rising by 12 percentage points to 51,642.
The Midwest Newsroom is an enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here. The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODOLOGY
Journalist Bek Shackelford-Nwanganga visited four Midwest mothers who chose free births for their deliveries: Natalie Krueger of Osmond, Nebraska; Chalé Turner of Topeka, Kansas; Destiny Abercrombie of Kansas City, Missouri; and a 20-year-old woman from Sioux City, Iowa. Shackelford-Nwanganga also interviewed Dr. Caitlin Linscheid, an OB-GYN in the Kansas City area. She reviewed data about home birth and consulted other media reports about free birth.
REFERENCES
Nowhere to Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the U.S., 2026 Report (March of Dimes | August 2026)
Three Nebraska mothers challenge state’s restrictions on midwife-assisted home births (Nebraska Examiner | June 30, 2026)
Home Birth Blues: 49 states allow nurse midwives to deliver your baby inside your home. Not Nebraska. (Flatwater Free Press | June 18, 2026)
Nebraska Supreme Court reverses ruling on credentialing for nurse midwives (Omaha World-Herald | Updated Oct. 12, 2025)
Nuchal Cord (Cleveland Clinic | Updated Jan. 23, 2025)
The Birth Keepers: how the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world – video (The Guardian | Dec. 11, 2025)
Home Births in the U.S. Increase to Highest Level in 30 Years (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Nov. 17, 2022)
National Vital Statistics Report: Changes in Home Births by Race and Hispanic Origin and State of Residence of Mother: United States, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention| Nov. 17, 2022)
What is Trauma-Informed Care? (Trauma-Informed Care Implementation Resource Center)
Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2023 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics | February 2025)
Placenta Delivery: What to Expect (Healthline)
Melbourne wellness influencer found short of breath and clammy after free birth hours before death (The Guardian | June 15, 2026)
Encompass Farming (Instagram profile)
Encompass Farming (Instagram post | Aug. 19, 2026)
10 Comments
My first thought was that it’s interesting that Flatwater would be willing to publish something like this. And it is interesting, but it’s also noteworthy that Flatwater didn’t write it. And you can tell the difference between this piece and something Flatwater wrote.
I mean, they even included references with links to the relevant content at the end of the article! Flatwater never does that! And I have read some Flatwater articles where their “sources” were literally walking around a college campus asking random students to say bad things about Trump, and that was effectively the whole article.
Whomever this “Midwest Newsroom” is, I need to find their actual website and start following their articles, because if this article is typical of what they produce then who needs Flatwater anymore?? Wow.
” And I have read some Flatwater articles where their “sources” were literally walking around a college campus asking random students to say bad things about Trump, and that was effectively the whole article.”
Recall the FFP article on the huge feedlot in SW Nebraska that included critical comments from the locals, AND from a lady who lived in Colorado and was visiting Haigler!
Definitely. Flatwater has a very bad habit that they will publish comments from just about anyone, saying just about anything, as long as the comment is sufficiently inflammatory in support of the thesis of the article. Although ironically they often publish commentary that is so outlandish that it actually defeats their intention by exposing how bizarre the perspective they are trying to advance really is.
My personal “favorite” is still the article where the woman in Canada married an American prison inmate as the result of a drinking game, and was then shocked that people viewed her decision poorly. Who would have thought that getting drunk and marrying prison inmates may not be the best way to impress your friends?
“Who would have thought that getting drunk and marrying prison inmates may not be the best way to impress your friends?”
Or to publicize your badboy love by complaining publicly that your striped sweetheart can’t talk to you all the time…from prison! And FFW gave her the platform?
Yep, that’s a classic…but not in a good way.
There will inevitably be people who read this story and then respond with something to the effect of, “oh no, home birth is so dangerous! How dare you!? The government must intervene to stop this from happening!” Most of those people will be alleged doctors.
First of all, I call attention to the similarities in many of the above stories. Several of the people described in these tales who chose home birth over a hospital did so not entirely because of wanting home birth, but more so because of not wanting anything to do with a hospital. They described bad experiences in a hospital, being pressured into medical interventions they didn’t want and being kept there against their will. I’ll also add something this story missed, which is the absolute catastrophe of dealing with health insurance, medical billing, endless paperwork and the potential consequences if anything goes wrong during that part of the process.
So if doctors are sitting around and scratching their heads about why people want to do something “dangerous” like home birth, wonder no longer: Doctors are the reason! Doctors and hospitals have become so widely distrusted that there are many people in our society who now explicitly refuse their services, even when the alternative may be death. Doctors have literally become “a fate worse than death.” Ponder that for a moment.
Now, lets turn to the question of if the government has any right to get involved in this process. You will say that home birth is “dangerous” therefore the government has a legitimate interest in “protecting” people from this threat. But does the government have a legitimate interest in preventing something ONLY because it’s allegedly dangerous and they need to protect you from the threat? And why is Nebraska the only state in the union where this is apparently the case, while 49 other states don’t seem to have a bone to pick with this issue?
Consider a hypothetical scenario. You go out of a town on a business trip. While you are gone, a serial killer strikes and murders your family. Can you sue the government for failing to prevent the serial killer from murdering your family? Thats why the police exist right, to prevent crime? According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the answer is no! (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 1989.) The government isn’t responsible to proactively prevent a crime taking place and you can’t hold the government accountable if it fails to prevent you from becoming a victim.
So if the government isn’t responsible to protect us from threats, why do they have the authority to do so? When have we ever given someone the authority to do a thing but not held them accountable for the consequences of their actions (or inaction)? And more importantly, if the government can’t be held liable for your safety in a situation where an outside threat is forced upon you against your will, why would we tolerate a government that restricts your freedom to freely chose a dangerous situation? What we end up with is a Nanny State, which enforces it’s will on us allegedly for our own good, but which is actually impotent to keep us safe. Such a government will eventually ban you from driving a car because you might get into an accident (and/or because it causes “climate change”), but will deny any accountability when you lose your job due to being unable to get to work, among dozens of other ways the law will be used to destroy your basic quality of life.
So why are doctors and other “experts” allegedly so vehement on this issue? The answer is money and power. Doctors make a lot of money when they can scare people into getting medical “treatment” they don’t actually need, or failing in that, force it on them through the government. If you have your baby in a hospital that represents huge amounts of money for numerous medical providers. The hospital gets a cut, the nurses get a cut, the maternity ward gets a cut, the doctors get a cut, the anesthesiologist gets a cut, and they all keep getting their cut when they force you to remain in the hospital for several days before they let you go home. If you have a home birth, none of those people get anything. In their perspective every birth that doesn’t happen in a hospital is someone “stealing” money from them. They want their cut, and they will turn to the government to make sure they get it if thats what it takes to force you into their hospital bed.
Multiple attempts have been made in recent years to change the laws in Nebraska in order to get the government and the doctors out of your personal affairs. But every time such a change to the laws is presented, every doctor in the state shows up to protest and throw a giant hissy fit over it. They put on such a circus that it scares the state senators into backing down. According to Senator Ben Hansen: “Maybe the hospitals and the Nebraska Medical Association and the OBGYNs wanted to keep childbirth in Nebraska to themselves.”
There is no “maybe” about it. The government is being used to protect a monopoly on childbirth. And then when they get you into their hospital, they can do whatever they want with your body and your wallet.
Of course, if the state mandated a regulatory preference for the use of a CM, CMN, CPM, or a doula to save costs, these same folks would be up in arms about how women are being mistreated.
“Multiple attempts have been made in recent years to change the laws in Nebraska in order to get the government and the doctors out of your personal affairs.”
Having and caring for the unborn, then born, is never just a “personal affair.” From Medicaid to WIC to a myriad of other tax-funded programs for expectant and new mothers, it’s NEVER a personal affair.
But yeah, if a pregnant woman wishes to use a CM, CMN, CPM, or a doula in the name of “personal affairs”, then she should be forced to forfeit access to tax-funded health care for her or the baby. If a woman wants to forego professional health care in professional setting, all in the name of “it’s my personal business”, then let’s hold them to it if they subsequently want taxpayer funded health care for themselves or the child..
It sounds like what you are against is tax funded welfare programs. Thats a point worthy of discussion, but it’s a separate issue. If you think those things shouldn’t exist or that they should be more strictly regulated, then okay, but that doesn’t actually deal with the real question at hand.
The question at hand is, “can the government define what kind of medical treatment you choose to receive of your own free will?” (According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the answer is a resounding “no!”)
Essentially this is the COVID debate, but in reverse.
In COVID, the government mandated that you receive experimental “vaccines” (which don’t actually meet the original definition of what a vaccine is or how it works), wear a mask at all times (including in your own home or car, while alone), sometimes wear multiple masks (Fauci unironically argued for wearing two or three at once), stand six feet away from other people at all times (unless you are sitting down, in which case COVID can’t get you, apparently), and banned you from many of your daily activities like going to work, going to church or going to visit a sick family member (but going to buy beer at Walmart was still okay). Under COVID ideology, the government decided it could force you to do certain things, even when those things objectively made no sense at all, in the name of keeping you “safe.”
Now in this situation, the reasoning is the same (keeping you “safe”), but the course of action is the opposite. Instead of mandating that you must do a thing, the government outlaws your option to do a thing, infringing on your freedoms of religion, association and speech. And the specific thing they have outlawed is just as irrational as the thing they mandated, because they have outlawed your option to hire someone to help you with your home birth, but not outlawed the home birth itself. How is it “safer” to force you to have a baby alone than it would be to hire someone to watch over you while you have a baby? That makes no sense, in the same way that saying COVID will kill you without a mask but only until you sit down at the restaurant made no sense.
So I pose the question to you: Do you trust the same “experts” who told you that COVID justified taking away your freedoms to also infringe on your freedoms in another health related matter? And do you still trust them when what they demand of you flies in the face of common sense?
Your questions are certainly warranted.
I would pose the question somewhat differently:
If you went with your personal freedom in giving an at-home birth (“stay outta of my personal affairs”), why would you trust the same “experts” who told you that COVID justified taking away your freedoms by accessing, or demanding, tax payer funded post-partum health care?
Pre-natal, natal, and post-partum health care for the baby (and mom) are all related. I’m not sure you can or should separate them.
The answer of course is that I don’t trust the experts, before, during or after any particular reason is born.
For example, Nebraska has a law that after a child is born the parents must submit the child to a blood test. If you have your child in a hospital, they do this without giving you any choice in the matter. If you have a home birth, they try to coerce you by withholding a birth certificate. I oppose it in both cases, because as you said, I don’t trust the experts. If I don’t trust them in one scenario, I also don’t trust them in any other scenario either. I make a specific point to be consistent on this.
My policy on doctors is essentially that I don’t do business with them unless someone is bleeding or has a broken bone. Beyond that, I avoid them entirely, as I assume they will either fail to be helpful or will engage in conduct to make the situation worse. Every encounter I have with virtually anyone in the medical profession tends to further reinforce this perspective, as they often prove unhelpful at best, and commonly take some action that becomes a major inconvenience for me.
But thats still entirely beside the point. The fact that doctors can’t be trusted is all the more reason why the government shouldn’t be allowed to force me to use their services against my will. It definitely isn’t a defense of government authoritarianism, since the government authorities in this case (as in most cases) are part of the problem much more than they are any part of the solution.
When something is a bad idea, asking the government to use force to impose that bad idea on people who don’t want it is also a bad idea.