• Improving Our Maternity Care Now, Four Care Models Decisionmakers Must Implement for Healthier Moms and Babies (Courtesy of The National Partnership for Women & Families)
• The Big Push for Midwives Campaign Strategic Pillars
• The PushMap showing CPMs Legal Status by State
• The PushChart showing MORE information on CPMs Legal Status by State
• Interpreting Home Birth Research: Understanding Conflicting Evidence (Courtesy of Citizens for Midwifery)
• Do Nothing, Decriminalize, or License CPMs? (Courtesy of Alabama Birth Coalition)
• CPM Education and Certification (Courtesy of Friends of Iowa Midwives)
• Brief Summary of CPM Education (Courtesy of South Dakota Safe Childbirth Options)
• The National Birth Center Study II (Courtesy of American Association of Birth Centers)
• New Requirements for CPMs (Courtesy of NARM)
• Clinical Experience Comparison (Courtesy of South Dakota Birth Matters)
• CPM Education Levels:  2009 Survey (Courtesy of NARM)
• CPM Highest Degree Obtained:  2009 Survey (Courtesy of NARM)
• Do Nothing, Decriminalize, or License? (Courtesy of Alabama Birth Coalition)
• From Calling to Courtroom

Feel free to explore the PushResearch page too … there are many helpful articles and studies that are available to you!

The Wax Paper: Apples and Oranges ... Home Birth Science or Propaganda?

Studies, like the Wax Paper, that include high-risk ACCIDENTAL out-of-hospital births are going to show worse outcomes than studies that exclusively evaluate low-risk PLANNED out of hospital births with a skilled midwife. These more relevant studies show no difference in risk to the baby.

If someone tells you about a study that shows higher rates of deaths for babies born at home please, ask them if they are comparing APPLES to ORANGES.

Specifically:

1. Does the data in this study include ACCIDENTAL out-of-hospital birth?
2. Why should that make me oppose PLANNED out-of-hospital births with midwives?
3. Doesn’t this study really mean that I SHOULD support this bill, to make sure women PLANNING out-of-hospital births have access to midwives?
4. Why try to trick me by mixing apples and oranges without telling me about the oranges?

Don’t be fooled by the BAD SCIENCE of The Wax Paper (TWP) that compares APPLES to ORANGES.

• Read The Tyranny of Meta-analysis and the Misuse of Randomized Controlled Trials in Maternity Care
• Read Betty-Anne Daviss and Kenneth C. Johnson’s call for withdrawal of TWP.
• Read Amy Romano’s Science & Sensibility post to see the junk meta-analysis of TWP.
• Read Time Magazine’s in-depth article about home birth in America and TWP.
• Read Our Bodies, Ourselves blog post with a letter to the editor at Time about TWP.
• Read Jennifer Block’s piece in The Daily Beast about TWP.
• Read The Unnecesarean.com and the discussion by the Editor of the Lancet of TWP.
• Read Dr. Kathryn Clancy, Asst. Professor of Anthropology at the Univ. of IL research blog.
• Read The UK’s National Childbirth Trust critique of the junk meta-analysis of TWP.
• Read Commentary as published in Birth, Issues in Perinatal Care – Dec, 2010 on TWP.

Download Additional Information

Download these PDFs to effectively address the Wax Paper as it rears its opaque head at a Statehouse in a legislative session near you!

• 1-21-2011 PushNews RELEASE_Docs Use Junk Science to Oppose Home Birth
• Wax Paper One-pager
  Pushers! Download this handy PDF one-pager and share with your state lawmakers when ACOG and your state’s Big Medicine Lobby start trying to cloud the issue of planned home birth with all this Wax Paper. Good thing is, we Pushers can see right through to the truth about this bad science.
• Wax Paper Postcard – 4 up
  Pushers! Download this handy PDF postcard for state lawmaker mailings. (It’s a 4-up doc for easy printing!) Want to do more? Get in touch with folks in the know on the ground in your PushState today.

Even More Handouts