This really bothers me...

There's a family I became aware of not too long ago on one of my parenting boards. The mom was asking for prayers because she was facing prosecution for having a homebirth in Ohio. Yes, prosecution, she was facing charges for endangering her child's life for having a homebirth. A group on Facebook has been set up and you can join it here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1017828571&v=feed&story_fbid=173459489767#/group.php?gid=140938029710

I think this is absolutely absurd. This has NOTHING to do with the health of the baby. In this situation especially, the baby was fine. Mom was blacking out a little and the midwife didn't have oxygen (since I guess it was illegal for her to have it on her) so it was decided that the family would call the EMTs to be on the safe side. It was doing that that has brought about these charges. But again, this has nothing to do with the health of the baby or babies in general. In the Netherlands, about 30% of births are homebirths. In the US, about 33% of births are cesareans. Take a guess as to which country has the lower infant mortality rate. I'll make it easy, it's NOT the United States. So, if the high rate of homebirths in the Netherlands leaves that country with a lower infant mortality rate than why is this woman being prosecuted? Money, pure and simple. Money has lead various groups to go against homebirths because as long as women give birth at home, hospitals lose money. I mean, you do know that hospitals make a TON of money off of births, don't you? Yeah, they do and they make even more money when a women ends up with a cesarean, considerably more. So, these groups play off of the fears of women, make them afraid of something happening to their babies, and really push home the idea that the ONLY SAFE place for a woman to have a baby is a hospital.

Now, don't get me wrong, for some women that is the safest place. Women with high risks pregnancies are best served in a hospital. But for women with healthy, low risk pregnancies, there's little to no reason to go to a hospital unless that is what the woman wants. But really, to be honest, doctors make pregnancy sound like a risky venture, don't they?

The fact that this family is facing these trials greatly concern me, especially as I consider any future birth plans of my own. My daughter's birth was a rather traumatic cesarean (with lots of drama just moments before the surgery between my husband and my family) and it has taken me a long time to recover from that and I'm still not fully recovered from it. I'm scared to become pregnant. I am honest to goodness scared of becoming pregnant. At the same time, I feel the urge to have another child but that fear, at the moment, is still stronger. I'm scared of getting pregnant here because I don't think it's possible to have a VBAC in a situation where I don't know the native language. I'm scared of getting pregnant at home because my options are limited. My chance of having another cesarean are pretty high and that concerns me. I've already told John that if I ever get pregnant again and that pregnancy ends with a cescarean, it WILL be my last. I will request a tubal at that point. Twice will be bad enough, I will not go through a third time. And I will not go through another several years of being afraid to become pregnant.

Roe vs Wade was about women having reproductive rights and making decisions about their own bodies. Why is it that women can make that decision when it comes to killing her child but she can't make those decisions when it comes to bringing her child into the world?