Women Should Not Have The Right To Choose, According To The American Medical Association

To me it seems obvious that the AMA is motivated by cash here, and not out of concern for mothers and newborns.

As of now, no actual legislation has been drawn up, but the AMA has agreed to back a measure called "Resolution 205," a request to support the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' (ACOG) position that home births are not safe.

"We are against home births, period," said Gregory Phillips, an ACOG spokesman.

Women who give birth outside of a clinical setting risk putting themselves and their newborns at risk, Phillips told ABCNEWS.com.

In an e-mail to ABCNEWS.com, AMA board member Steven Stack, MD, wrote that the AMA "stresses that the safest setting for delivering a baby is in the hospital or a birthing center within a hospital complex."

The influential medical groups -- AMA and ACOG -- now find themselves at odds with those who say women should have the choice to give birth at home or in a hospital.

The American College of Nurse-Midwives has issued an unequivocal statement in support of planned home births, citing a study in the British Medical Journal that showed home births to be no riskier than hospital births.

Although only about 1 percent of babies born in the United States are born outside of a hospital, the debate has been framed in some circles as a battle between our country's troubled medical system[oh, that liberal bias-ed]and mothers-to-be who want to break free of it.

Since it would be unconstitutional to prohibit home births, this is what they came up with:

"This will trickle down to the insurance carriers. If the AMA says home births are dangerous, fear of litigation will cause insurance carriers to refuse to support doctors who oversee midwives," said Fischbein, who oversees four midwives in addition to his regular practice.

The effect, Fischbein added, would be that he and other doctors would be forced to drop midwives who perform home births.