More Hospitals Banning Videos in Delivery Room

Hospital managers across the country are confronting a tough decision, reports the New York Times: whether to allow families to videotape births. For one thing, those ever-more powerful cameras can deliver strikingly detailed pieces of evidence should things go wrong. In a 2007 case, for example, the University of Illinois Hospital was forced to pay $2.3 million after a video showed a nurse using excessive force.

More and more are banning the practice, also citing the distractions they can cause in the delivery room (one doctor likens it a "media circus") as well as the privacy rights of doctors and nurses who wind up on YouTube or Facebook. Still, hospitals are getting pushback from parents. "It's about our rights,” says one mother who unsuccessfully fought with a Maryland hospital about videotaping her delivery. “Who can tell me I can take a picture or not take a picture of my own flesh and blood?”