Doctors should try to talk women out of home births because of the “unreasonable risk” of having a disabled baby, ethics experts have argued.
It makes no sense to bombard pregnant women with advice on drinking and smoking, yet stay silent on the risks of choosing to give birth at home, they say.
Julian Savulescu, of the Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and Lachlan de Crespigny, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at the University of Melbourne, compare home birth to driving a child without a seatbelt and say that it is an unreasonable risk for no great benefit.
Writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, they insist: “Pregnant women have an ethical obligation to minimise risk of long-term harm to the