“99% of souther italian babies are c-section” ? check your facts. this is just nuts. keep in mind a few things:

1) humankind has been having babies for thousands of years without advanced medical aid.
2) the idea that the US is somehow more advanced in its birth care seems a bit arrogant
3) just because you witnessed some things in africa that didn’t add up doesn’t mean that the very modern hospitals in other countries do the same things
4) just because you are a woman doesn’t give you the lock on dictating quality of birth care.
5) 1950s was a bad time to be born? i guess i should be thankful i made it this long.

St. Kitts, Dominica, and Paraguay are good examples– and a child born in any of these places will automatically be granted citizenship.

St. Kitts I visited years ago,while working on boats in the region-and while they were building a great golf course at the time,not sure childbirth practices and amenities were high on it’s list. dominica already mentioned,and paraguay-well,paraguay.

Other jus soli countries include Brazil, Panama, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Jamaica, Chile, Nicaragua, Uruguay, St. Lucia, and Antigua… and lest I forget, Pakistan.

I have researched chile for this reason in the past,brasil mentioned=might be okay in some areas. Antiqua-slight possibility,same with uruguay. Nica,um,no. Jamaica,same. Argentina;i’ve no idea but guessing it’s similar to other places still in the 50′s as far as childbirth. I’d love to hear others knowledge on the subject.

All of that said,IF i were already an expat in one of these countries,I might consider,given that my life was set up there,and I was knowledgeable of the resources and options in depth.

So,how ’bout that Pakistan? lol
And a great dual citizenship to have for a US citizen,huh?

I love the homebirth movement; in fact I did that route and ended up at the hospital anyway…and that’s fine. point is,I had OPTIONS.

99% of souther italian babies are c-section;this is out of convenience,not safety. WHO does not recommend above 50% and even that is very high to them. [not that the WHO has dibs,but just mentioning that even they have the opinion that less intervention is better.]

In many 3rd world countries,the options you have are homebirth with maybe or maybe not-a midwife who is minimally trained through lineage or light training-or a full on hospital,private,where you most likely will have a c-section.

Dominica has a US med school,but still,not sure the hospital is one to rely on.
Having lived in Kenya for a long time,you see what is common in many countries: wealthy indians and africans have their babies,and it is a la 1950′s-the kid is taken away,no questions asked,breast feeding is not encouraged,etc.

So,yea,the 50′s may have been great for security and a seemingly simpler time int he USA,but it was not a great time to be born. LOL

At the risk of being dramatic,I’m just pointing out that we need not throw the baby out with the bathwater,and to research-b/c like in the US,some parts of a country may have better options than others. Sure,you can find some good choices in brasil,but equally can you horrific places to birth,again with automatic c-secions.

And,while you certainly,as a woman,can tell them what you want,and maybe they will listen b/c you are a foreigner and perceived wealthy,as any woman in labor will tel you,advocating for yoru personal safety is the last thing you want to navigate at the moment in time. You want it set up before hand,which is why many placesi n the US now have doula’s etc.

If anything,pick your place by whether or not there are a)alot of ‘crunch type expats’ living there (aka Bali or mayb e san miguel de allende),or b)a University town or city,which is likely to have progressive and multiple options and technology available to you. Depends-if you want homebirth you can certainly find it,and if you want high tech,you can get that too,yes,probably for a fraction of the cost and with very friendly/loving staff.

However,it does not take much internet research to find that women in rural india who go to birthing centers are standardly slapped and yelled at if they cry or scream,and many opt instead to stay at home…it is a real problem: Creating venues for women to give birth safely (assuming their traditional method has veyr high mortality rates and there is a problem to address),while having local staffed trained enough to know how to sustain this approach. Cultural practices imported into a ‘western’ setting create worse results in some cases than the original.

Meanwhile,ppl think europe is great-midwives attend births (this is largely due to cost in socialized medicine,ppl),etc. While Holland practice looks down upon women who choose drugs to help in labor,you find a different scenario in each country,indeed. I’m all for choice-not mandated cultural or medical practices.

There tends to be this glamourizing of poverty,which you can do when you have a vantage point of not living in it. Rose colored glasses…i’m all for hte cup is half full and for getting out of dodge these days..but honestly,with a topic like this,it’s about alot more than getting a second passport.

I’d like to add that there exist economic citizenship programs, and two of three countries offering such programs officially were mentioned in your article: Dominica and St. Kitts & Nevis. The third one is Austria, requiring around 4 million of investment to the country.

St. Kitts and, especially, Dominica are more affordable: $200,000+ and $75,000+. St. Kitts also allows you to buy a property to qualify for citizen’s status.

We are not insured, having just returned from a few years in Europe, so we spent over $10k on the best doctor and care we could afford. Baby was born, all fine so far. 6 hours later, we felt like happy satisfied customers, and we told the staff we were ready to go home. Standard operating procedure in California or Indiana, where us & others have delivered in the past, and gone home 6 hours later, for the 3rd or 4th child. We were cut off from our family, because the hospital had a “flu quarantine” going on that forbade our other kids entry, so we were anxious to reunite the family.

What unfolded next is hard to describe. Bottom line is, our friendly questioning and probing on the subject of leaving prompted our “hired help” to threaten us with Child Protective Services involvement! In their view, taking a baby home before 24 hours is a threat to the baby! So by extension, all home-birthing mothers are also enemies of the state. Our attempts to reunite our family were responded to with threats of prolonged separation of our family, and by extension, the taking of family members into government custody (a CPS standard op, as we all know). There is a radical and extremist mentality in this field, and it is getting dangerous.

So our newborn was incarcerated for 30 hours, while we sat on our asses and twiddled our thumbs, while suffering their vain attempts to convince us that petossin, vaccines, and flu shots are mandatory, and anything less is “3rd world” treatment of our child! Yes, they thought we were crazy for wanting to protect the integrity of mother’s milk, while they threatened us and peddled pharmaceuticals, live viruses, and experimental flu shots.

Well I don’t know about you, but my wife and I are both fully ready for that 3rd world now.

They said they were mitigating risk, but what they were really doing is putting themselves out of business. The smart money is leaving for sure, including us. The only way their medical business will be able to stay in business, while remaining hostile towards their customers and while remaining so ignorant to holistic health is if they socialize the whole damned thing, so that their fees are extorted.

Our doctor was world class, and so were his nurses. His parents immigrated from the Philippines, to create a better life for him, just as mine immigrated from Germany for the same opportunities. Once the empire is sufficiently dead, and the doc returns back home to his parent’s motherland, he will have world-class customers like you and I. Take what you can from the dying empire, but don’t go down with the sinking ship.