Saturday, August 9, 2008

Homebirth in the Media

Today someone posted an article from Time Magazine on Giving Birth at Home which was actually fairly balanced and fair. True, they did have the usual naysaying doctors telling horror stories, but they also provided the homebirthing community a chance to tell their story. All in all, a good article!

Someone also posted that Dr. Phil is going to be doing a show on home vs. hospital birth - you can see that here. Even though I have never seen the show (I generally find talk shows to be boring, insulting, degrading and embarrassing), I was really excited and went off and wrote a letter to post to the show about the benefits of homebirth.

However, some members of the forum posted later that they were not hopeful about the opportunity that this show will present. According to those who have actually watched Dr. Phil, he never presents issues unbiasedly - he always has an agenda. That agenda will then be acted out as such:

(1) Pick the least educated/prepared person for the side that he dislikes.
(2) Pick the most educated/prepared person for the side that he likes.
(3) Do everything possible, through badgering, questioning, belittling and editting to make the person for the unfavored side like like a complete idiot, while exalting the favored side.

I sincerely hope that this will not be the case, but apparently Dr. Phil has a really bad track record with this - and his bias (if history proves correct) is against anything natural (such as homebirthing). I don't plan to watch the show, but I'll be interested to see what other people say about it when it comes on.

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