A Good Smiting

I'll admit it. I experience schadenfreude from time to time. Now is one of those times.

Extremely vocal (and generally incredibly illogical) anti-homebirth advocate Dr. Amy Tuteur has found a new pulpit from which to preach her ad hominem attacks and general mouth-foaming about those poor, uneducated, foolhardy, and misguided women who eschew all that modern medicine has to offer and choose to have unmedicated or even *gasp* homebirths. The woman who generally employs a post-and-run approach to birth issues in a variety of online forms (or a delete-all-those-who-point-out-the-lack-of-science/evidence-behind-my-thinking on her own blog) has found a new home at Science Based Medicine.

*snerk, snort*

While Dr. Amy started off with a post that had the regulars at SBM nodding their head in agreement, it has only taken three posts for the the zealotry and lack-of-research that is Dr. Amy to have presented itself. In her post today, Dr. Amy begins by trying to convince the SBM readership that "natural childbirth was invented by a man to convince middle and upper class women that childbirth pain is in their minds, thereby encouraging them to have more children."

Um, yeah. Because for thousands upon thousands of years prior to the 20th century, women were having epidurals and c-sections. This whole unmedicated vaginal birth thing is *such* a newfangled thing.

Dr. Amy goes on to make a number of historical mistakes in her post and tries to paint the entire natural birth movement as possessing the same mindset of a particular male doctor from the early-to-mid 20th century. Ordinarily, this type of illogical writing would have me quite upset and quite possibly spending hours researching, commenting, and debating.

But Dr. Amy made a huge mistake. She posted her unresearched tripe on a board full of well-researched, scientifically minded readers. And while I do not agree with a good bit of the posts (or commenters) on the site, I do have to say this: there are all well-educated and can spot a logical fallacy (for the most part) from miles away.

And they are giving Dr. Amy a bit of a schooling.

Excuse me while I make a bowl of popcorn and sit back to enjoy the schadenfreude.