The pandemic caused a 30-year high in the U.S. births at home in 2021 as people avoided hospitals that were being swamped with COVID-19 cases, the Centers for Disease Control reported on Thursday.
The findings offered another view of the pandemic’s effects on maternal health and how, of the nearly 52,000 home births recorded last year, the greatest increases were among Black and Hispanic women.
While home births rose an average of 2% from 1990 to 2019, they jumped 22% between 2019 and 2020, said Elizabeth Gregory, a researcher who co-authored the report.
“For the first time in my whole career, women were more afraid of the hospital than afraid of birth,” said Maria Iorillo, a licensed midwife in San Francisco who has been assisting in home births for nearly 40 years.
For the first time in at least 14 years, Latinas have a higher maternal mortality rate than white women.
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