"It is ignorant in itself to declare that women who do not want to give birth at home are only doing so because they are ignorant and misinformed."
Yes it is. But nobody is saying this here so I'm not sure why you've made this comment. We all know that there are many reasons other than safety why women want a hospital birth. Pain relief for a start!
"But it is not fair to say that women who want a hospital birth even if they are low risk are ignorant and misinformed."
Of course not!
But they are 'misinformed' if they believe there is proof that hospital births are safer.
"If hospitals are so bad for low risk women, then they are free to have homebirths, and to tell their midwives that under no circumstances should they be taken to hospital."
Why would they tell their midwives not to take them to hospital? Hospital is exactly the place you need to go if your labour becomes difficult. That's what obstetricians are for!
Anyway kelly2000 your comments reflect two things: that you haven't read the thread, and that you don't REALLY understand very much about this issue. The misapprehension that the statistics showing homebirth is safe are unreliable because they exclude from the homebirth results those women who tranfer in during labour with difficulties has been addressed on several different occasions on this thread. And actually if you had read the research itself or a reasonable account of it (such as this: nhschoices ) you'd know this. So you are arguing from a position of ignorance of the facts. Not helpful when you're trying to have an informed discussion on any topic!
"Also lets not forget that intervention has been used for thousands of years"
And has often caused more harm than good. If you go back through midwifery texts from the middle-ages in Europe there are dozens and dozens of references to the damage done by doctors meddling with women's labours.
In any case - nobody who supports homebirth is categorically against intervention. Sometimes it's needed, and we're all very grateful that modern medicine exists to rescue women and babies from labours which would have killed them in the past.
Which is why it's extremely annoying that so many voices raised against homebirth on this thread have flagged it up as an issue when actually - it's not an issue. Have you ever heard of 'a straw man argument'? "A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position."
That's what's been going on on this thread - this stupid insistence that supporters of homebirth are making a case unassisted birth, and denying the very real advances in obstetrics in the past 100 years. I think you are doing this because you simply have nothing sensible or informed to offer as a proper challenges against the arguments put forward by homebirth supporters, whose views, unlike yours, are supported by the evidence.
"One more dissenter unleashes yet another 2 pages of howling down"
I think you'll find it's more 'reasoned argument' than 'howling down'.