“The Business of Being Born” is a passionate ground-level examination of home childbirth, anchored in a scene in which its executive producer, Ricki Lake, the actress and former talk-show host, gives birth to her second child in a bathtub. That graphic scene, and several other unblinking sequences of home birth attended by a midwife, are intended to erase any stigma from the situation. Practiced widely in Europe and Japan, home birth has largely disappeared in the United States, the documentary states, because of an image as a primitive, unsanitary ritual.

The statistics cited in the film suggest that the revolution in childbirth from home to hospital was spurred by technology, which increasingly turned it into a surgical procedure involving multiple, often unnecessary interventions. In 1900 95 percent of births in the United States took place at home. By 1938 the number had shrunk to half. Today the number is less than 1 percent.

As the film enumerates disadvantages of hospital births, conspiracy theorists might detect a plot by the medical establishment to take control of a process for both economic and psychological reasons. But the medical establishment would argue that a hospital is the safest place to give birth because if something goes wrong, speed is essential. “The Business of Being Born” is not overtly political. Its feminism is palpable but unspoken.

Here are some of the disadvantages laid out in the film: Obstetricians have surgical training, but the film contends that many have never seen a fully natural birth and are therefore unprepared to supervise one. Because hospitals are businesses that thrive on a high turnover, drugs to induce and speed labor (and that often make it more intense and painful) serve the system by filling and emptying beds at a faster rate.

There are horror stories here of widely accepted medical practices that were subsequently shown to be dangerous to a newborn. The administration of the drug scopolamine in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s was supposed to stop pain but, the documentary says, eliminated the memory of pain, often leaving the mother suffering post-traumatic stress. The taking of X-rays of the pelvis was common until the discovery that some babies developed cancer as a result. The use of the infamous drug thalidomide for morning sickness was found to cause birth defects. In the 1990s the drug Cytotec to stimulate contractions was found to cause ruptured uteruses.

The movie sharply criticizes the “lithotomy” position, in which the mother, lying on her back, is encouraged to “push.” Because it makes the pelvis smaller, that position increases the likelihood of having to deliver a baby with forceps or a vacuum extractor. Squatting is much less stressful for the mother, but more so for the doctor, who must catch the baby. The natural births in the film, including Ms. Lake’s, are carried out in a squatting position in warm water with a midwife and loved ones at hand.

The one exception in the movie is the breach-birth hospital delivery of Abby Epstein, the film’s director and one of its producers. (Her husband, Paulo Netto, is one of its producers as well as its cinematographer.) The movie’s recognition that natural childbirth in the home isn’t the answer for everyone keeps “The Business of Being Born” from turning into a one-note polemic.

Increasingly, the use of a Caesarean section, once the last resort in the event of an emergency, has become commonplace because it is so efficient. But as one expert after another points out, a C-section is major surgery. Although a woman’s first C-section poses few risks, the dangers of serious complications increase with each repetition. It is also very expensive.

The cost of our blind trust in hospital technology, the film implies, is reflected in the United States infant-mortality rate, the second-highest in industrialized countries. What accounts for that fact? “The Business of Being Born” suggests that a cultural aversion to natural home childbirth is a contributing factor.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Directed by Abby Epstein; director of photography, Paulo Netto; edited by Madeleine Gavin; produced by Ms. Epstein, Amy Slotnick and Mr. Netto; released by Red Envelope Entertainment and International Film Circuit. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. This film is not rated.