analog

Two reasons that the above assertion/judgment is incorrect:

Breast milk is not an antibiotic, but contains white blood cells with antigen information which helps your child's own immune system build much more quickly. This is extremely advantageous for the child, and why a major "way of thinking" is that it's an essential part of the baby's nutrition. That being said, I agree that it's assholish to tell someone they're less of a caring mother because they don't breastfeed.

However, we don't know what the infant mortality rates would have been WITHOUT breast milk during that long-ago time period. So... there's no data to compare and say whether it did or not. Saying "it didn't work" is like saying seatbelts don't save lives, "so many" thousands of people die every year, if you didn't know how many people died in similar crashes without them. It's an incredibly flawed, one-way-thinking postulate.

Jenny Hatch:

Your methodology and "information" is being questioned because both are speciously constructed and rely heavily on pulling someone in with emotional, not logical or rational, talk to get them to swallow whole what you're attempting to feed them. That's why you're having an issue "reaching out". Appealing to sentiment, rather than to information and logic, will get you shut out of people's minds in record time.

The bottom line is, "natural" does not automatically equal "better" or "good". Yes, people birthed without any help for all time. That doesn't mean that the introduction of some medical professional is without merit. You are lucky/blessed (whichever word you prefer) to have many healthy children. Not everyone births perfectly every single time. In fact, lots of people don't.

And if he's so into "home" and "free" birthing, why have a center? That's like starting a membership club for anarchists, it's completely contrary to the purpose.

I encourage debate on all topics, but I can't respond to asinine comparisons like "lung cancer from smoking"- which would mean withholding life saving care and "I chose to have a baby, now pay for it". Smoking may have been a choice, but saying that anyone should have lifesaving care withheld because it was their choice that put them there, is just plain awful.

Right. Suffering and death. Treating illness and trauma. So what you're trying to say is... universal healthcare should pay for childbirth because it falls under the heading of "human suffering and death"?

And there's a huge difference between "accidental" pregnancy and "intentional" pregnancy. We pay for the ignorance and irresponsibility of people every day, accidental pregnancy due to either of those factors is hardly any different. Covering all pregnancy, fully, writes a blank check on my tax dollars for all their care. People bitch ALL the time about how expensive having a child is... you want all of that, for every woman in the US, to get tacked into our tax burden?

For the record, I'm not against universal healthcare. My opinion is that having a child is a choice (which it is, unless it's an accident, which isn't what we're talking about), and should be treated as elective medical care (not paid for universally).