Is homebirth safe?
Yes.
That's the short answer. For more than 90% of women, homebirth is not only safe, but the safest choice. According to WHO (World Health Organization), the United States ranks 35th in infant mortality. That means that at least 34 other countries lose fewer babies than we do each year.
There is something called the 'cascade of interventions'. This idea is that once an intervention is introduced into the birth process, there is a snowball effect that spirals into other (and often many) unwanted interventions. The other factor to this is that these interventions are unnecessary, or would be if it weren't for the interventions that preceded them. An example of this is starting an IV on a laboring woman. This limits her mobility, which makes laboring how her body should more difficult. This could lead to an epidural and automatic constant fetal monitoring. The epidural affects the baby's heart rate, or mother's blood pressure, and ultimately leads to a cesarean. Does this happen every time? No. But are the chances good? Yes.
Women who are truly not at a high-risk during pregnancy benefit from midwifery care and homebirth. Studies have not shown that hospital birth is safer than homebirth, they have shown that homebirth is at least as safe as hospital birth. Studies have also shown outcomes for mothers and babies to be better in homebirth.
Here are a few pages that have some good statistics or studies on the safety of homebirth:
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