Birth centers are often called “unsafe.” But the research says otherwise… For healthy, low-risk pregnancies, planned birth center births have been shown to have excellent outcomes for both mothers and babies — while dramatically lowering unnecessary interventions like cesareans, inductions, and epidurals. In the National Birth Center Study II (15,000 births), the cesarean rate was just 6% with no maternal deaths. Outcomes for babies were comparable to low-risk hospital births. Birth centers aren