More than a doubling of maternal death risk isn't pure insanity to you? It wipes out 20-30 years of progress on that statistic. It's also not that low in absolute terms. With 4 million births per year, an increased death rate of 1.52 deaths per 1000 births is an additional 6,000 deaths per year, under pretty much the most tragic circumstances imaginable.

And that's with the status quo of only the healthiest pregnancies being candidates for home birth. It'll only go downhill as it becomes more prevalent.