To think free birthing should be entirely banned

[StandFirm]

I have come across this article earlier which made me feel so very angry at the cynical extremists who brainwashed a mum into an entirely avoidable tragedy: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/nov/22/free-birth-society-linked-to-babies-deaths-investigation
If I'd listened to similar cretins, I would have died in childbirth aged 19 and none of my three DCs would have been born alive or at the very least without severe disabilities. 'Pearls of wisdom' which gave me the rage include:
-ultrasounds are not safe
-women’s “bodies do not grow babies that we cannot birth”
Such ignorant perfidious lies. I hope the cult leader gets sent down for a very long time. That poor little child was robbed of a healthy body and many more actually died. I really hate the internet's ability to spawn dangerous cults entirely unchecked.

No I don't think freebirthing should be banned.

I read this article earlier and like you was appalled by the misinformation and dangerous resistance to any medical intervention the two founders of this organisation peddled, along with hiding 'negative outcomes'. But to me it seemed the issue is more with one of the founders wanting to monetise the practice without being able to regulate it.

I wouldn't free birth, but I also know people who have successfully, likewise know people whose babies died during midwife-assisted home births. I think it's important that women are questioning and resisting unnecessary medicalisation but I also believe the conversation around risks should be much more pragmatic and less emotive.

No, women shouldn't be forced to have medical intervention if they don't want it.

You're conflating issues here.

Free birthing shouldn’t be banned. Most free births are accidental aren’t they? Faster than expected labour, couldn’t make it to the hospital, ambulance didn’t get there in time sort of scenarios and then what the police would need to investigate to make sure it wasn’t your plan all along… That would be awful. Consequences for spreading medical misinformation would be a good idea though.

I agree OP. Freebirthing seems like madness.

I believe free birthing is madness but I also believe a women has the right to consent or not to consent to medical treatmemt.

Deliberate freebirthing should be a criminal act of child endangerment in my view

Amanda the Yorkshire Farm/Shepherdess had one of her babies at home on her own as she lives far from a hospital and had already had other babies and birthed sheep. I don't think you could ban it

I think homebirths should be banned too. But that’s just me

Banning free birth isn’t the way to go. It would discourage women from seeking medical help if they begin to free birth and it goes wrong.
The woman sounds appalling and I hope she faces justice for her dishonesty. Effectively she is a scammer.

Broadly I think women should be able to take risks with their own bodies and those of their babies (because pregnant women are not just vessels for the unborn and shouldn’t have restrictions placed on their autonomy in favour of the baby) and if choosing to free birth is what they wish to do, that choice should be available and legal. But I do believe that all choice should be informed, and that’s the problem with free birthing as a natalist “movement”, that often the women who choose it are uninformed, or have actively been provided with misinformation. That’s where the law should become involved, with harsher penalties for those who position themselves as authorities on something whilst peddling untruths or failing to disclose accurate information or safety guidance.

If human birth required medical intervention, humans would have been extinct millions of years ago.

I think deliberate free birth is grossly irresponsible. I wouldn’t mind seeing the promotion of it banned. But how on earth do you ban women from actually doing it? You can’t force someone to accept medical intervention they don’t want.

I think why people want to do this also needs looking into - I suspect many of them have been previously traumatised by poor care. How would forcing them into medicalised birth and/or the justice system help?

When I had my older DC I was very much into this sort of thing. Watched documentaries about free birthing, including one in the US where a woman gave birth in the ocean with dolphins surrounding her. I thought it was wonderful at the time. I was a bit of a hippy back then- vegan, everything had to be eco friendly e.g reusable nappies, second hand clothing and toys, didn’t own a pram so had to carry one child in a carrier on my back and the other in a sling on my front.

I had really traumatic births with my first 2 DC- shoulder dystocia with the first so needed emergency forceps and second birth went brilliantly and quickly with zero pain relief until the placenta got stuck and I had a massive haemorrhage, lost 4 pints of blood and was on death’s door. Despite this, with my third I did consider a ‘free birth’, I was just totally taken in by it all and wanted to resist the trauma of hospitals. I supplemented with all sorts of shit in the lead up to the birth to prevent haemorrhaging including nettle and fenugreek.

She was born in hospital in the end. Not because I didn’t try to have a home birth but because the midwife called it after about 8 hours- I think she truthfully just wanted to go home being pregnant herself. It actually did go ok. I lost slightly more blood than they’d like but nothing dramatic. She was also my biggest baby at 10 lbs 3. I had a ‘lotus birth’ so carried her placenta around in a bag with his still attached to her. I realise and appreciate how nuts it seems now 13 years later but I was totally taken in by it all. I was very young and naive too in my defence.

In contrast, I had c-sections with my last 2 children so, you know, I’ve had a lot of different birthing experiences. I don’t think free birthing should be outlawed but do think women need to be aware of the many risk. Right now it’s sold to women through these channels like a natural and wonderful thing with little pushed of how wrong it can go.

The women who run this are operating like a cult, refusing to allow dissent. How on earth could anyone who proclaims to be supporting birthing women not recommend medical intervention when it would save a baby’s life?

Well me and my kids wouldn’t be here.

Well quite.
Suppose you ban deliberate free birth but you let women off if they just didn’t manage to make it to hospital in time. Then women who are hell bent on free birthing will go somewhere distant from help before the birth to make sure they can claim that. So how do you stop them doing that, restrict the movement of pregnant women or women you suspect of wanting to free birth?
Bringing the law into any part of the process has dangerous consequences.

If you do, you need to think how you would enforce it and what punishment or sanction you would give the courts to use.

If I’d given birth even 50 years I would be dead, so I for one am very grateful for medical intervention.

in the middle of the 17th century, at its highest level, maternal mortality was 170 per 10,000 (or 1.7 percent of women). Across the main pre-industrial period, average maternal mortality was 120 per 10,000 or 1.2 percent.
https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/09/19/childbirth-in-the-past/

It’s this nonsense that needs to be tackled.

So, nature has it right? If you get cancer, don’t fight it. It’s nature’s way of regulating the population?
As your teeth grow naturally you never need to see a dentist?

Midwives have been practicing since ancient times.

No. Childbirth just needs to not kill enough women to keep the race going. Around 800,000 women die of pregnancy and childbirth-related causes a year.

Don’t know about you, but when I birthed my babies “enough women and babies survive that the human race doesn’t die out” wasn’t the metric I was using when considering the safety of myself and my children. I had c-sections for placenta issues and both the babies and I would have died without them - the human race would’ve carried on though. Funnily enough survival of the human species wasn’t really what my DH and I cared about though.

Planned homebirth with properly trained midwives present (midwives in the UK are all trained to a high standard, but the professional title isn’t protected and regulated in the same way in the US) is far far safer than freebirth. Midwives following women through pregnancy with the goal of a midwife attended homebirth will rule out anyone deemed at extra risk, anyone needing a planned cesarean for medical reasons, will visit the home and check it’s suitable for homebirth, will check the distances and likely waiting times in case an ambulance is needed and will recommend hospital at any point if conditions are not right. And even when things do go wrong, a pair of midwives at a homebirth are not helpless. Say a women has a post partum haemorrages following a homebirth - the midwives will be able to inject pictocin (standard injection of synthetic oxytocin that helps shrink the uterus) and may be able to do other things too like press down on the uterus from the outside. They’ll also know how much blood is too much and will call for the ambulance at that point. It’s riskier for this to happen at home rather than in hospital but so much less risky than after a free birth with no one with extensive knowledge around childbirth present.
And if the option to have a homebirth with midwives present stops some mums who are afraid of hospitals from opting for free birth, then that’s probably a net win in terms of overall maternal and infant outcomes.

Problem is, how would you enforce it? Keep a constant watch on pregnant and forcibly remove them to hospital? Jail for mothers with newborns who freebirthed or jail for grieving women because freebirthing is incredibly dangerous?

I think we need a way to counter misinformation in this country. Banning things doesn't change people's minds or intentions for the most part.

No one brainwashed her. She’s an adult who created a human, she has agency over her own decisions. She’s just made a bad one. But that would be on her.

I agree.

Plus it’s part of a thinking of “women should be held criminally responsible if something happens to their unborn baby” and “women should be forced to have medical procedures without their consent for the sake of their unborn baby”. And I don’t like that at all.