Word: risks
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There's nothing more natural than being born. There's also nothing quite as fraught. A whole lot can go wrong during that long and tortuous journey from the womb to the world. Modern medicine can eliminate a lot of the risk, but in doing so, it can also turn what could be a joyous experience for the mother into the equivalent of an all-day appendectomy...
...nearby hospital to which the mothers can be brought in case of complications. "The most comprehensive study of this was published in the British Medical Journal in 2005," says Melissa Cheyney, an assistant professor of anthropology at OSU and a practicing midwife herself. "It showed that for low-risk [home] births in the U.S. and Canada, the infant mortality rate was roughly 1.7 per 1,000, or about the same as it is in hospitals." The key, of course, is the "low-risk" part - which means young, healthy mothers with routine pregnancies and no complicating variables like multiple fetuses...
...premature and low-birthweight babies, leading some critics to conclude that midwifery was partly to blame.) Cheyney and doctoral student Courtney Everson examined one county's birth records from the entirety of that period and found that in that area at least, there was not any increased mortality risk associated with low-risk home births. In interviewing doctors for her study, however, she also learned a few very important things about why they remain so fixedly opposed to the midwifery option...
...thing, even Cheyney admits that while the odds of mortality in the case of routine births may be no higher at home than they are in the hospital, they're no lower either. And even the lowest-risk birth can turn high-risk fast - with maternal hemorrhaging and fetal distress just two of the dangers - making immediate access to high-tech care imperative...
...Tellingly, the proposed law doesn't try to tweak those figures. If you go from being a good credit risk to a bad one, credit-card companies can still take steps to make sure they continue to be adequately compensated. When you go to buy new things, they can charge you 30% a year if they want to. The thing they wouldn't be allowed to do under the new law is to go back and change the terms of your original agreement - that is, hike your interest rate on existing balances - except in very few situations, such as your...