A "concerted and calculated" backlash by some doctors is downplaying the benefits of home births and has involved the use of "flawed" evidence to support claims that babies were more likely to die if not born in hospital, the general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives claims today.

Cathy Warwick, who heads the body that represents 38,000 midwives in Britain, has been incensed by a recent paper presented by US academics last month that claimed a home birth carried three times the risk that a baby would die.

It prompted the respected medical journal the Lancet to write, in an editorial, that "women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk".

In an interview with the Guardian, Warwick described the Lancet editorial as "sweeping and misogynistic".

She said midwives now "feel there is a concerted and calculated global attack and backlash against home birth which is being unfairly pilloried by some sectors of the global medical maternity establishment.

"There is a danger that risk during childbirth is presented in a way which is leading women to believe that hospital birth equals a safe birth. It does not. There is no hard and fast guarantee that a woman will have a safer birth in a hospital than at home".

There are concerns globally that midwives, who have long campaigned for mother-friendly births, have lost ground in recent years. Hannah Dahlen, the president of the Australian College of Midwives, backed her counterpart in Britain saying that "intense medical lobbying and strategically released journal articles" had put the profession in Australia "in the hands of the medical profession".

Warwick said there has been a trend for some doctors to cast birth as a "medical problem and not a natural process". Medics dispute this saying that home births can only be justified for about a "quarter of pregnant women" and the rising cost of medical litigation, with NHS obstetricians facing half a billion pounds of court fines, has made medics wary of the risks.

Doctors have also voiced concerns that home births, where only midwives are present, can mean women rushed to hospitals if complications arise – and then get stuck in traffic.

Philip Steer, editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and a professor at Imperial College, said he was in favour of "midwife-led care" but "that you cannot consider home births for women with antenatal high blood pressure, or diabetes. It's suitable for those who have already had a model pregnancy, and a healthy baby. Women who have had a second baby make up just over half the total population and those who deliver without forceps first time are half of those. You quickly get down to a quarter of women who could choose home births".

Disputes involving obstetricians, said Steer, now account for almost two thirds of the £800m NHS medical litigation bill. "That means 15% of maternity budget going to lawyers and clients. It has increased 10 fold in 10 years. Cerebral palsy victims get £6m each and I know private sector obstetricians faced with insurance premiums of £50,000 a year. I look after high risk women whose local hospitals will not take them on for delivery. And I have been up before coroners, ombudsmen ... even the high court. The money makes everyone want to play safe."

Despite this Warwick is determined to launch a fightback. She pointed out that the Netherlands once had one of the lowest perinatal mortality rates but now has one of the highest perinatal mortality levels for babies in Europe. It is also a country where a third of women have home births - compared to the UK where the figure is just 3% - which is why the issue has become so contentious.

"What shocked us about the Lancet editorial was its language and tone and how it pumped the hype about the dangers of home birth, and made sweeping and misogynistic statements".

The Lancet said it stood by its editorial which highlighted the work of researchers from Maine Medical Centre in Portland, who had pulled together data from studies in the US and in Europe and considered a total of 342,056 home births and 207,551 hospital births.

However it has been attacked most notably by the NCT, the UK's leading charity for new parents, which said the researchers had used too small a sample size when looking at deaths and failed to distinguish effectively between "planned and unplanned" home births.

• This article was amended on 16 August 2010. The original reported Cathy Warwick as saying that Holland has Europe's lowest perinatal mortality levels for babies. This has been corrected.