Controversial Doctor Howard Marchbanks Dies

Funeral services will be held this week for Dr. Howard E. Marchbanks Jr., a popular but controversial general practitioner who championed the cause of natural childbirth during a medical career of nearly 50 years.

Marchbanks died of pulmonary fibrosis Saturday at Riverside Community Hospital. He was 75.

Throughout his career, which began in his native Kansas and moved to Orange County in 1958, Marchbanks shunned high-tech medical facilities for the homey atmosphere of a birthing center fashioned after a patient’s bedroom where babies are born naturally, without drugs.

One of his techniques was the so-called “water birth,” a procedure where a newborn is immediately immersed in a warm bath to duplicate a womb’s environment. He was also a believer in home births and breastfeeding, said his son, Howard Marchbanks III, of Fountain Valley.

“He believed in and was an advocate of prepared natural childbirth,” said Howard Marchbanks, one of nine children the doctor fathered with five wives. “He basically fought the system of taking a woman in for childbirth, anesthetizing her so she didn’t know what was going on, and then having the child born anesthetized.”

Although he was adored by thousands of his patients, Marchbanks’ constant bucking of the medical Establishment led to brushes with the state medical board starting in 1975, when a baby died after a home birth he attended. At that time, the board recommended that he use a licensed midwife, reduce his practice to about 360 births a year and enroll in continuing medical courses.

In 1991, after accusations from the board of gross negligence and sexual misconduct, Marchbanks surrendered his license and promised to stop practicing medicine.

Barbara Mason of Fullerton, a patient who became his longtime birthing center administrator, blames his problems with the medical board on “politics.” In all his years of work, Marchbanks “never lost a baby at a birthing center,” Mason said.

“The sexual misconduct charges were never proved; they were all basically hearsay,” Mason said. “Howard was sick of the lynchings when he retired. At the hearings, the support for him was absolutely unreal.”

Marchbanks’ patients still speak of him in glowing terms.

“I had the most wonderful experience having my babies in his birth room; so did my husband,” said Bridget Gannaway, 33, of La Mirada, who had two of her five children delivered by Marchbanks. “It was beautiful. He was a very, very kind man who was always there for you.”

Physical therapist Kirsten Adams of Stanton said Marchbanks was “ahead of his time” with his natural, holistic methods.

“He was avant-garde,” said Adams, 40, whose 4-year-old was delivered by Marchbanks. “It was hard for me to do a natural childbirth. But they said a wonderful thing to me. They said, ‘Let us be your epidural [a drug given to mothers to ease childbirth].’ And they were.”

Marchbanks, a graduate of Kansas State University Medical School, opened the county’s first birthing center in Orange in 1975, moved it to Brea, and then in 1981 settled the Marchbanks Alternative Childbearing Center on Whittier Boulevard in La Habra. He delivered “well over 20,000 babies” during his time in Orange County, Mason said.

His methods grew out of his patients’ desire for a more natural birth experience, starting in the early 1960s, Mason said.

“It was a calling of love for him, never a money issue,” Mason said.

Marchbanks is survived by his nine children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A viewing ceremony will be held today from 4 to 8 p.m. at Memory Gardens Memorial Park in Brea. A funeral and grave site services will be held at the memorial park at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

In lieu of flowers, donations should be made to the National Assn. of Childbearing Centers, 3123 Gottchal Road, Perkiomenville, PA 18074.