As a first-timer who's planning a homebirth right now (second pregnancy, the first was lost to miscarriage), I would be really put off by a "scare you into natural birth at all costs" event. I don't doubt there are realities behind what she was saying (and obviously I didn't hear the presentation so I can't go plug her references into Google Scholar or anything) but it would make me mad as hell to hear somebody undermining her own credibility and by extension *my* credibility as a would-be homebirther and the potential of the homebirth/natural birth movement as a whole to become more accepted in our society, by mixing facts with a lot of scaremongering and pseudoscience and woo.

Which is not to say I'm opposed to hearing about the spiritual/scientifically unquantifiable side of birth. I really admire Ina May Gaskin, for instance. But I am really opposed to using 'scientific' findings, which often on closer examination are not that scientific, to scare people, which is what it sounded to me like that woman was doing, from your secondhand account. And I would think there is really enough fear around birth in our culture already.