Closing maternity units

"We favour free-birthing"

The debate about home births and hospital births rages on, now spiced up by the intervention of the American “free birthers” who come from the land of obstetric insanity. The recent article is still alive with comments and contributions.

Dr Crippen feels sure that it is only a matter of time before a child sustaining physical or mental damage as a result of the mother’s dangerously eccentric views on obstetric care is given a legal right to sue his mother for damages. And the "free birthers" will be amonst the first to receive the writs.

Meanwhile, Hewitt is closing maternity units throughout the UK and telling mothers to be that they are to have the right to choose a home birth.

They also have the right to choose a sink comprehensive school rather pay for their children to have the elitist private education that wealthy left-wing “socialists” like Diane Abbott buy for their children. Diane campaigns for better education for black children in London but her son went to the City of London School, current fees £3816 a term.

So many maternity units are being closed that soon home births will not just be an option. They will be the only option. To get decent care mothers may well have to go privately. If you are a socialist and against private medicine, I am sure Diane will advise on matters of conscience.

Even the choice of units for closure is crooked. Hewitt tries not close hospitals in Labour marginal constituencies.

Currently, 43 maternity units are under threat of being downgraded or closed, or have been closed.

• 26 (60 per cent) are operated by providers which finished the 2005-06 financial year in deficit.
  
  
• 29 (67 per cent) are situated in Parliamentary constituencies held by opposition MPs (Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Independent).

When you are trying to make up you mind about the wisdom and safety of home-births, read through the comments under the article “Going it alone : the “free-birthers”.

Dr Crippen would not let some of these commentators supervise a chicken laying an egg at home.

You can make up your own minds.

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Comments under the original article here