They miss the obvious here: Some women are giving birth at home because they don't have health insurance and can't afford to pay cash up front for a delivery. That was true back in the 1970s, when I apprenticed as a lay midwife, and it's even more true now.

There's no question that home delivery is much cheaper, and in low-risk births, just as safe when you have a qualified midwife. (For one thing, you don't pick up those antibiotic-resistant superbugs in your own home.) The medical restraints of hospital births can trigger a cascade of complications and interventions that might account for the U.S.'s disgraceful 32 percent C-section rate. The standard line is that American doctors are jumping the gun to avoid legal liabilities, but I think there's more to it than that: C-sections have become so commonly used that most medical students don't ever learn non-surgical alternatives to managing a complication, and thus don't know any other way to treat them.

The argument against home birth is the risk. But why are our infant and mortality rates so bad? We have the worst statistics in the developed world. You can't blame that on home delivery.

The other factor in choosing home delivery is that the quality of prenatal care is usually much higher, since midwives are famously reluctant to chance a high-risk home delivery.

Consider the typical profit-driven OB-GYN "assembly line" visit of 20 minutes or so. My visit with my lay midwife was more likely to last a couple of hours, including detailed questions about my protein intake, any unusual symptoms that might indicate nutritional deficiencies, blood pressure sitting and standing, and internal and external examinations. Midwives also recommend positions to encourage a breech baby to flip. (My midwife diagnosed twins in the last trimester that the woman's OB-GYN had missed. Just sayin'!)

So instead of moaning and wringing their hands as they've been doing for decades now, it might make more sense for ACOG to offer more affordable - and safe - alternatives to women. In England, it used to be that a low-risk woman in labor was provided with a midwife or doctor to attend her (the UK has since moved toward the American model of technology-controlled birth) with an ambulance on call outside her home.

Oh, and by the way? Any kind of universal health care should include supported home birth as an option, because it helps control costs. Hospital-based maternity services are a very lucrative revenue stream.

ATLANTA - Home births rose 20 percent over four years, government figures show, reflecting what experts say is a small subculture among white women toward natural birth.

Fewer than 1 percent of U.S. births occur at home. But the proportion is clearly going up, study by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. The new figures are for 2004 to 2008. Home births had been declining from 1990 to 2004.

The increase was driven by white women — 1 in 98 had their babies at home in 2008, the most recent year for which the statistics were available.

[...] The increase is notable because doctors groups have been increasingly vocal about opposing home births, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has for years warned against home births, arguing they can be unsafe, especially if the mother has high-risk medical conditions, if the attendant is inadequately trained or if there's no quick way to get mother and child to a hospital if something goes awry.

Doctor participation in home births declined by 38 percent from 2004 to 2008. The percentage of home births attended by certified midwives and nurse-midwives grew, meanwhile.

(Beccah Beushausen photographed near her home, Wednesday, June 10, 2009. (David Pierini / Chicago Tribune / June 10, 2009)

Wow, this is pretty despicable. Woman captivates thousands in anti-abortion movement with false story of difficult pregnancy

The unmarried mother's story about giving birth to a child diagnosed as terminally ill in the womb hit a major nerve on the Internet.

Every night for the last two months, thousands of abortion opponents across the nation logged on to a blog run by the suburban Chicago woman who identified herself only as "B" or "April's Mom."

People said they prayed that God would save her pregnancy. They e-mailed her photos of their children dressed in pink, bought campaign T-shirts, shared tales of personal heartache and redemption, and sent letters and gifts to an Oak Lawn P.O. box in support.

As more and more people were drawn to her compelling tale, eager advertisers were lining up. And established parenting Web sites that oppose abortion were promoting her blog -- which included biblical quotes, anti-abortion messages and a soundtrack of inspirational Christian pop songs.

By Sunday night, when "April's Mom" claimed to have given birth to her "miracle baby" -- blogging that April Rose had survived a home birth only to die hours later -- her Web site had nearly a million hits.

There was only one problem with the unfolding tragedy: None of it was true.

Not the pregnancy, and not the photos posted on the blog of the supposed mother and Baby April Rose, swaddled in white blankets. The baby was actually a lifelike doll, which immediately raised the suspicion of loyal blog-followers.

"I have that exact doll in my house," said Elizabeth Russell, a dollmaker from Buffalo who had been following the blog. "As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam."

--

She had expected only a handful of friends to read it, but when her first post got 50 comments, she was hooked.

"I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear," Beushausen said.

"Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand," she said. "I didn't know how to stop. ... One lie led to another."

So the lie isn't the problem, but the fact that she got addicted to blogging made her continue on. What a sad and disgusting tale. Using a phony story to whip up the anti-choice movement is pretty vile. A woman has the right to choose in this country, but the religious right will do anything it can to try and take that right away. You never hear them talk about the mother in any of their debates. It's like the woman is only a "vessel" to carry a child and doesn't exist in any other manner. "Bring the vessel here." "How dare the vessel speak out."

Hullabaloo calls them moral midgets.