Legal Question in Health Care Law in Missouri

Re: Legality of Homebirth

Under current Missouri law it is unlawful for a midwife to assist you. That issue was put before the Missouri General Assembly this year, and I do not know if it passed or not. I do know that if it did, the law won't change until August 28.

Home birth is also dangerous. Among the things that go wrong in terrific hospitals are meconium aspiration, placenta previa, abruptio placenta, nuchal cord strangulation, breech presentation, and a lot of medical issues. If there is a problem with the child's airway, you won't have neonatologists and pediatricians in your living room waiting to assist you.

Your child deserves the best start in life it can have. That means having the birth in a place where if anything does go wrong, someone can be there to assist with it. You don't want to wait for an ambulance ride.

Before I became a lawyer, I was a respiratory therapist who assisted at a number of high risk deliveries. Many of those were standard deliveries that went wrong. We saved a lot of those kids. In each of those instances, the child would not have survived an ambulance ride. Home birth may be trendy, but its like juggilng butcher knives: if you're not good at it, you cause yourself a lot of pain.

Good luck.