When I was an active Libertarian, one group of folks I often saw engaging in politics were midwives, many of who were pushing for the expansion of licensing to allow them to perform births at home. I’ve never really had much of a strong opinion one way or the other (except that, even at the time, it seemed to me that licensing doctors was a pretty good idea) on the subject. But I happened to stumble across this tidbit that I wasn’t aware of before:

In 2003 the US standard birth certificate form was revised to include place of birth and attendant at birth. In both the 2003 and 2004 Linked Birth Infant Death Statistics, mention was made of this data, but it was not included in the reports. Now the CDC has made the entire dataset available for review and the statistics for homebirth are quite remarkable. Homebirth increases the risk of neonatal death to double or triple the neonatal death rate at hospital birth.

[...]

[T]he neonatal mortality rate for DEM (direct entry midwife, another name for homebirth midwife) assisted homebirth is almost double the neonatal mortality rate for hospital birth with an MD. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that the hospital group contains women of all risk levels, with all possible pregnancy complications, and all pre-existing medical conditions.

The Certified Nurse Midwives show an even lower mortality rate than births with an MD, but CNM births often take place in a hospital.

That’s pretty compelling evidence. It’s not yet dispositive though. One think that may be affecting the numbers is the fact that the type of person who undergoes a home birth with a (non-certified) midwife is probably someone who distrusts the medical system generally. If that’s the case, I have to wonder–was this woman vaccinated? Had she been receiving any medical care? Was she taking some type of herbal substance that may have caused complications with the pregnancy? The data is silent on that.

Clearly, though, a lot more study is in order.