This from Medscape - interesting in light of the recent discussion on birth practices and BF.
"In Missouri, lay midwives who oversee deliveries can be prosecuted for committing a class C felony. Although legislation had been passed to let lay midwives practice freely, it was recently overturned by a ruling in a lawsuit filed by opponents. Do you agree or disagree with the ban on lay midwifery?"

The poll results were as follows for all professions: Strongly agree with the ban - 22%, Somewhat agree - 8%, Neutral - 4%, Somewhat disagree - 12%, amd Strongly disagree - 52%.  When broken down into professions, the results for physicians (same categories) were 42%, 9%, 8%, 16%, and 24%; for nurses 23%, 12%, 3%, 9%, and 50%; and pharmacists (don't know why they were broken out except that Medscape in general has lots of articles of interest to pharmacists) 33%, 20%, 6%, 16%, and 25%.  While it indicated that 1133 persons had participated in the poll at the time I read it, unfortunately, there was no breakdown of the numbers by profession.

What I found particularly interesting (aside from the fact that physicians were most in favor of the ban and thus against the lay midwives-no surprise) was the fact that the percentages for "all professions" came out more favorable to the midwives that any of the individual categories!  I would love to know the breakdown of the "other" categories-who they were.



Winnie 

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