Rise in Home Births

More women are having home births, but it looks like they are finding it harder to get qualified medical help. I have heard of people just having a doula. I had my babies in the hospital, but I was born at home. So I guess it's not as shocking of an idea as it is for some people. However, I do think it's risky to have someone who isn't qualified delivering a baby. What are your thoughts?
FROM ABC: According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control, there were over 28-thousand home births in the US in 2008, a twenty-percent increase from 2004. Home births still make up less than one-percent of U-S births. But the new numbers are the highest since 1990. And the rise is mostly being driven by non-hispanic white women. For them more than 1-percent of births occur at home.
In 2008 the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement warning their members to have nothing to do with the "trendy" movement to home births. Of course before 1900 virtually all births were home births. The warning has had its effect.
For example, in New York City, midwifery is currently impossible - illegal - because a midwife must have An affiliation with a hospital. The only hospital to support midwives in New York recently closed, and no other hospital will sanction them. But the safety of hospital births can also be questioned.
The U-S spends enormous amounts of money on pregnancy and birth-related hospital costs, yet it has one of the very worst rates of maternal mortality in the industrialized world - ranking 39th according to a study done in 2008 and reported in the prestigious British Medical Journal Lancet.