To think free birthing should be entirely banned

That article is horrific.

Especially when a baby was obviously in trouble & mum/parents were being told all was ok.

I was reading it thinking how could they be so stupid & why were they so in thrall to this woman that they seemed to be hanging on her every word!

We need tools such as a law change to deter influencers from peddling harmful misinformation, and to punish them if they continue. Free speech does not mean a free for all to cause harm.

The choices of women who for whatever reason end up free birthing should not be policed. Perhaps you gave birth because you couldn’t reach help quick enough - some labours are quick. Can you imagine how intrusive and frightening it would feel in the days post partum to get a visit from the police?

This is a full term baby with its own separate body and life. You are talking as if it’s a clear moral case that the adult gets full choice over very short term medical care at birth but the full term baby has no entitlement to its body and life not being put at risk by a third party ( the mother).

And Thats is very clearly, imo, not a clear moral case ( regardless of the legal position).

But that's not what's happening. Homebirth is care that's offered. And my point exactly is that many health situations will have options in care and not a one size fits all solution and birth is one of them with attended homebirth being one option.
You don't have to take the option, I didn't take it either, but it's there and should be there and birth, just like other health care situations are not one size fits all.

According to the article, they explain it as not being a bad thing.

@LauraNorda

Oh dear. You are one of this lot of people.

What you do is grab onto this thought, and because it seems to make sense, you don't investigate it further. It sort of terminates there.

Please educate yourself on biology and the suffering of women and babies. This seen today in some countries where some women have untreated uterine or vaginal prolapse.

I am personally at a loss as to why a woman would choose to free birth but I absolutely and unreservedly support her right to do it.

Those providers were wrong in how they phrased it but the facts don't change because of that. Which is why the individual situation should always be taken fully into account if planning q homebirth.
Distance from hospital is an important factor to consider for example.

It absolutely is true. If you don’t want to accept the care you’re offered you need to either go it alone, or go private.

I think it would be more problematic long-term to ban them or make them illegal, but, yes, some of it's batshit. Ignorant people leading the blind.

Someone (quite a few people actually) quite literally did say it was fine, bmi and age under 25, no health problems and previously giving birth with no problems was described in a way where nothing could go wrong.
Luckily for me I didn’t listen to such advice otherwise my baby may not have lived maybe we’d both have died as it wasn’t uncommon back in the day

Plus the people talking about “you can always transfer to hospital if something goes wrong “ as if everyone lives a two minute drive from a hospital

I agree with this. The adult women are not just being reckless with their own life but that of a separate human being, the full term baby.

Absolutely not.

I think it's a terrible idea but it would be almost impossible to police and could also be a slippery slope into a fetus becoming more important than a woman's right to bodily autonomy.

That's not true though. You have choices in your care in many many many areas.
Care providers will make recommendations but they don't force care on their patients. Sometimes the choices are limited or they don't have more than one option but this isn't one of those cases so you can't compare it to something where there is only one treatment option.

That was a long and harrowing read.

Your thread title says you think free birth should be entirely banned but from your subsequent posts that is not your position. Rather, you think people irresponsibly advocating for free birth should be stopped/prosecuted - is that about right?

Which is exactly why I disagree with freebirths where you have noedical professional present. I was responding to someone mentioned homebirths where you are attended by trained midwives who know when further help is needed.

I think free birthing should be banned, whilst women are free to choose the birth they want this type of birth is irresponsible, none of us know how easy or difficult any birth will be and there is always a possibility things can go wrong and women are vulnerable at that time, in pain and can be confused which means they aren’t always able to make rational decisions. To promote this type of birth is totally irresponsible. I am also if the opinion given my experience that midwives sometimes promote nonintervention against other advice which can potentially cause permanent damage to baby and mother. Of course we all want safe births with healthy mother and child and ideally without intervention but there are times when intervention is needed. The views that some voice caesarean births implying that they are aren’t a “real” birth is both dangerous and can make women who need those births feel they have failed which isn’t healthy.

Much like every other course of medical treatment at the moment.

That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a while.
So only if someone's pregnancy and birth (or other health care need I suppose) proceeds exactly as you believe is standard they should be entitled to care with the NHS and if you deviate a little bit and may need some adjustments in your care then you have to pay yourself.

We’re not exactly ‘designed to’ do anything because evolution isn’t quite the same as design, and also we have evolved to live in groups, and one of the things that involves is helping each other with childbirth, so arguably we have absolutely not evolved to give birth alone.

No, the human race would not have become extinct. What it would have continued to experience is the huge loss of mothers and babies that have instead been saved by modern medical intervention.

Several of my friends survived pre-eclampsia. A century ago they would have died. My second was delivered by cs after monitoring showed a problem. If I’d refused and waited for nature to rake its course I would probably have had a dead baby judging from what needed to be done with the cord round his neck. At the least there would have been some drama instead of a calm, supportive cs.

I think the pregnancy process needs a radical overhaul to stop women wanting to freebirth.

It's an absolute pisstake that I was put on the high-risk pathway, repeatedly tested for conditions I didn't have (GD), and yet they missed giving me preventative meds for pre-eclampsia, and ignored my repeated queries about precipitate labour which runs in the family.

One case of pre-eclampsia (2/3 of women who have pre-eclampsia die of heart disease) and one 90m labour later, I have to factor in "seriously incompetent health system" into whether I want another child.

The most useful information I got during my pregnancy was from my vet, her last appointment didn't turn up and she gave me the rundown on various processes etc.

Whereas my consultant bitched at the nurse for holding her up because "I want to go home".

You understand that there is no equivalence between seatbelt wearing (a non invasive event that makes vehicles safer for other road users and passengers) and having autonomy over your own body - the baby is still part of your own body or between sectioning an adult with poor mental health and a woman wanting autonomy over her own body? The argument that only a mad woman would not prioritise the baby is terrifying in its implications.