11 Least Influential Countdown: No. 7 — Sebastian Hurst
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
With home births facing unnecessary hurdles in Georgia, Sebastian will have to be delivered at a hospital
Welcome to CL’s annual catalog of impotence: the 11 Least Influential. You’ll meet folks who tried to achieve an ambitious goal, but fell short (which happens to be the case with little Sebastian here); people who’ve devoted themselves to a personal mission in near-total obscurity; and ordinary Joes who can’t get anyone to pay attention to them. Every day until the full issue hits the streets on Nov. 11 (tomorrow!), we’ll bring you a new story of failure — some noble and heroic, others abject and pathetic.
Subject: Sebastian Hurst
Failing: Can’t be born at home
Sebastian Hurst hasn’t even been born yet — and yet he’s exhibiting a notable lack of influence. Of course, the root cause of Sebastian’s shortfall is hardly something you’d blame on a young man who’s still seven weeks away from the birth canal.
Like his mother before him — and two of her four siblings — Sebastian was destined to be born at home. Unfortunately, Georgia law makes it far too difficult for women to deliver anywhere but a hospital. In fact, it would cost Sebastian’s mom an estimated $1,600 to give birth at home. Delivering at a hospital, by comparison, is free. And because Sarah Hurst, a 20-year-old Cobb County native who works at a church nursery, subsists on a rather tight income, free is her only option.
“I wanted to be in a comfortable and relaxed environment,” Sarah Hurst says. “I wanted to have a home birth. I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps. And all of a sudden I can’t. It was hugely disappointing.”
