Freebirthing rant

As I was watching the Today show this morning (Australian version), my ears perked up immediately when I heard that they were doing a segment on freebirthing..no doctors, no drugs, is it safe? as if it were a conspiracy and with the requisite mysterious music playing in the background. I have to say there was nothing in this segement that was particularly 'new' or enlightening. However, I was very interested in how they were going to 'do' this segment and I assumed correctly that of course, freebirthing was too dangerous and too risky and women who do it were basically 'too optimistic' when it comes to the horrors of labour.

Of course, they went straight to Laura Shanley who is widely respected as one of the pioneers of the freebirthing movement in the US (in fact, Laura commented on my last post about freebirthing). Her positive experiences were contrasted with an incredibly idiotic doctor who of course had to say that birth was dangerous blah blah blah and women are stupid for choosing to avoid technologised birth. Not only was his argument vague but rather than saying 'interventionist' in reference to medicalised birth kept saying 'interventionalist'. Makes me slightly worried that he was allowed to leave medical school. In the studio, Dr. Rick Gordon, the medical editor for the show, was interviewedand he is not an obstetrician or an 'expert' in pregnancy or birth and he said 'death' so many times in the segment I just started to get even more angry.

You can watch the segment on the Today show link below and read the accompanying article. I think it would be great if women who have had homebirths or freebirths would write in about their positive experiences to the network and overwhelm them with responses because this was a completely one-sided story.
Email: today@nine.com.au

Source: http://today.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=417872