There is a very interesting post on RH Reality Check today that reviews the American Medical Association's recent decision to push for legislation criminalizing home birth.

Here is the text of the AMA's Resolution 205 on Home Birth.

How do beliefs and legislation like this gain support? Amie Newman suggests that as soon as a fetus gains legal protections which trump a pregnant woman's right to self-determination, a birthing mother loses all her power to make critical decisions about how and where her baby should be born.

Can you have it both ways? If I am not intelligent, critical or responsible enough to consider when it is the correct time to bring new life into the world through my body, how can I be trusted to know the best, most appropriate way to birth my baby into the world? Who should be trusted? Who gets to decide?

Let's revisit a question that was posed for anti-abortion protesters in a widely circulated video and essay.

Illegal home birth--how much time should she do?

Nell

