What’s going on in California? Why has the maternal mortality rate risen so sharply?

Once in a while I go read Dr. Amy Tooter MD at the skeptical OB just to see what she’s bleating about, and as I read the top article on her blog last night, was gobsmacked that she acknowledged the increasing maternal mortality rate as being problematic.  For a minute I wondered if she had asked Ina May Gaskin to guest blog a post for her. 

The post was so intellectually honest, I had to actually go skim through all of her posts from the past few weeks just to make certain I was in fact on Dr. Amy Tutuers  Tooters MD Blog.

In previous posts she had been blogging about another dead homeborn babe on the Mothering board, made fun of Natural Healing Friend and Writer Mike Adams, Dumped on Gloria Lemay, Rikki Lake, Natural Birth Promoters, Janet Fraser, and blamed Alaskas Teen Pregnancy Problem on the Palin family. 

Nope, that’s our girl.

But WOW, what an interesting post decrying the increase in Maternal Mortality in California.  It was so well thought out, so reasonable, and just so amazingly informative, I had to marvel.  Still sort of feeling floaty and high, like whew….breakthrough.  

After reading this paragraph:

“Is the rising C-section rate responsible for the rising maternal mortality rate? Without patient level data we cannot know, but it certainly is a possibility. I have written in the past about the diminishing returns of an ever increasing C-section rate and predicted that there would be a point at which the risks to mothers would outweigh the benefits to infants. I await the release of the California report to find out if we have reached that point.”

And then backing up to read the post written a few months ago about the diminishing returns of Cesarean. I think we can safely say, if you have not already been saying it to yourself for the past few years of Dr. Amys constant and consistent message of PROVING to anyone who cares to listen that she is right on every topic related to motherhood that was ever discussed by God and Man, that she is in fact the absolute PROOF of the existence of CONTROLLED OPOSITION.  ie (OK, today we’ll toss out a few scraps from the medical table, because hey, the stats on maternal mortality ARE looking a little bleak, and we can’t have Amy losing all of her credibility with an increasingly incredulous and hostile female american birthing population…)  So, have her question things a little bit, no big deal, and then it makes her LOOK somewhat authoritative and hey that MD after her name is “all she needs”… 

Sure, when she started writing her blog, way back, she was critical of the various messes that she witnessed in the hospital.  Hey, an industry that murders the American People by the tens of thousands every month with properly prescribed drugs has to have its critics, although most of them tend to be run out of town on a rail the minute they question any sort of medical orthodoxy. 

But when she started writing her Homebirth Debate Blog, a few months after I challenged just about anyone willing to debate me on my web site in an article titled Family Sovereignty , I have to wonder about the timing, the topics chosen to write about, which if you read through her blog today and do a quick scan from those first few posts back in May of 2006, she has been ripping the same topics ad nauseum every since she started typing.

It was almost a game with me.  I would post an entry on Lotus Birth and a few days later she was dumping on Lotus Birth.   Now, I am NOT saying that Amys blog was just set up to debate me without really debating me, (don’t want to send any traffic to that evil Jenny Hatch), she dumps on anyone who makes the case for normal, natural birth. 

Certainly she has made many enemies over the years, and just about the whole natural childbirth world collectively despises her and revolts against her pathetic attempts to deprive us of our Freedom and Sovereignty as Mothers.  But I will claim that the timing of some of her posts were kinda funny, as juxtiposed with some of the things I was writing here and there on this blog about homebirth, and since the point of this blog is to convince Mothers and Fathers to give birth alone, at home, it does make me wonder.

The very first essay I wrote back in the day, after I weaned my fourth child, and decided to start writing on Family Freedom in 1999 was in fact the essay Family Sovereignty.  It is the theme of all of my work on the web.  The web site where it was first hosted in 2001 was taken down this past summer for financial reasons, but it is still hosted at various places around the web, here on this blog, and is a chapter in my book Elijah Birth.  The silly thing is, when I wrote this paragraph:

“As I have struggled to make decisions for and in behalf of my children until they are old enough to make their own choices, I have come to adopt a few principles and beliefs about Knowledge, Freedom, and Self Government.  I hope to create a dialog on Family Sovereignty that moves way beyond the current supposedly relevant debates over day care and nationalized health care.  I am interested in debating with those professionals who think they know best how children should be birthed, nurtured, healed, and educated and would use the courts to force their cult of professionalism on those of us who are following our hearts to a more gentle and empowered lifestyle.  So, let the debate begin….”

I was not really concious of the level of animosity, hate, rage, rejection, and fear those words would bring into my life.

Now Perhaps Amy thinks that she has been debating me in the marketplace of ideas on her blog, and in a way she has, and she has boldly and confidently challenged Rikki Lake to debate her anytime and anyplace. 

“I’d be happy to debate you in any neutral forum of your choice, Ms. Lake. How about it?”

But Rikki is a busy celebrity mom who had a homebirth and made a documentary and while I’m certain she is well educated and could handle herself perfectly in any forum with the infamous Dr. Amy Tutuer, Tooter MD, I’m not so sure it is worth her time to debate someone licking the boots of the pharma companies 24/7 on her blog.

I, on the other hand, live for debate, and have researched, taught, practiced with my own babes and written about birth nearly non stop for the past twenty one years.  It is my passion, my love, and my hobby. 

I would love to debate you Amy, Any time, any forum, any place, in person or in a chat room.  You love to throw your facts, figures, studies, arrogance, “wisdom” and wit around the web, why not debate ME?

Recently you seem to be questioning of technology and technocratic birth and seemed to indicate that perhaps TOO MUCH TECHNOLOGY might be problematic to Mothers, although we all know eating and drinking in labor is absolutely unnecessary, the Aussie Medical Establishment is throwing out junk science and junk studies,  we all evolved from slime so just get over yourself – that body you think was created in the image of God is just a broken mass of evolutionary mistakes…you speak with such authority, verve, and clarity.  Dare we say, Boastful Confidence and Absolute Medical Authority?

With such confident and clear medical facts, figures, and AUTHORITY on your side, you wouldn’t be afraid to debate little ol’ me now would ya?

Just let me know when and where….

Jenny@NaturalFamilyCo.com

PS We could start with a lovely “chat” on my new Radio Show…

UPDATE: Next day…

I challenged Dr. Tooter MD in her comment section last night:

Jenny Hatch
Dr. Amy, Paging Dr. Amy….  
 
Wanna Debate on my Radio Show???  
 
http://naturalfamilyblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/dr-amy-tutuer-i-dare-you-to-debate-me/  
 
Hugs and Kisses!  
Jenny Hatch