Safety
Perhaps the single most influential midwife of our time, Ina May Gaskin (known as the Mother of Midwifery), offers the most compelling statistics in her practice that clearly demonstrate the safety of midwifery care. In her practice at The Farm Midwifery Center, the following outcomes were recorded for 2,028 births from 1970-2000 (www.inamay.com): 95.1% births completed at home; 3.6% non-emergent hospital transports; 1.3% emergency transports 98.6% vaginal births vs. 1.4% cesarean section 99.61% cases w/ no preeclampsia 98.2% cases had no postpartum hemorrhage.

One study conducted on the safety of home birth at The Farm found that “under certain circumstances, home births attended by lay midwives can be accomplished as safely as , and with less intervention than, physician-attended hospital deliveries” (“The Safety of Home Birth: The Farm Study,” A. Mark Durand, MD, MPH, Am J Public Health, 1992;82:450-452, www.thefarm.org). This study
also reported no maternal deaths under midwifery care at The Farm.

Another study evaluating the safety of home births attended by CPMs found that such planned home births for low risk women were associated with lower medical interventions than low risk hospital births in the United States (Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America. Kenneth C Johnson and Betty-Anne Daviss. BMJ 2005, www.commonwealthmidwives.org/links.htm).

According to a recent report in the American Journal of Public Health, women with low-risk pregnancies experience fewer medical interventions when they are in the care of a midwife than when they are being cared for by either an obstetrician or a family physician.

In 1992, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared that the quality of care provided by midwives is “equivalent to physicians’ care within their area of competence” and that midwives are “better than physicians at providing services which depend on communications with patients and preventative action.”