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.

Are you aware of the death rate in poor countries where women and their babies don't have access to medical care during childbirth?

I live miles from a hospital and the traffic into the nearest town with a hospital is really bad

Because if it wasn’t then there would be a lot more accidental and deliberate free births!

Because a home birth is actually cheaper for the nhs than someone birthing in hospital.

Because for a second/third time mother with no complications the risks have been statistically proven to be the same whether choosing home birth or hospital.

Because it’s far safer for mothers who birth quickly to have professional care to their door fast rather than be told not to come into hospital or risk birthing in a car.

Lots of midwives advocate for home birth and choose to have them themselves. People who say it’s just about candles and that it’s a risky decision don’t seem to understand how qualified and how much equipment home birth midwives actually bring with them and how fast they are to transfer you if there’s a hint of an issue.

Please give me a good fact as to why it SHOULDN'T it be an option in your eyes?

How so? please explain.
She said that refusing medical interventions during birth should be a criminalised.

foetal alcohol syndrome causes all sorts of issues for affected babies. Life long issues.

A sky diving school has nothing to do with policing a woman's body which society has a history of doing when it comes to women's bodies. It's a slippery slope.

Ultimately, it is a woman's choice and it should stay that way.

A skydiving school with high mortality rates would be due to improper health and safety and therefore it shouldn’t be allowed to operate as a business. Individuals should be allowed to choose if they wish to do things which carry a risk of injury or death, whether that’s climbing Everest, riding a motorcycle, or giving birth unassisted. Once you begin impinging on a woman’s bodily autonomy by placing legal restrictions on her actions to prioritise the unborn, the slippery slope begins of pregnant women receiving criminal penalties for doing all kinds of things against medical guidance, and pregnant women actively avoiding any kind of contact with services in case their actions are perceived as unlawful - which is entirely counterproductive - and turning instead to charlatans who peddle the misinformation which increases risk.

DD1 was a homebirth. Rang MW around 1.50am. MW turned up at 2.20. DD1 born 2.22am. Apgar score of 9. MW helped establish BF, couple of stitchee and checks. Left around 5am.

Cost to the NHS -around 3.5h of 1 MW's time.

Twins - advised to give birth in hospital. Medical staff refused to listen to my history of very fast labour and left me alone despite my saying I thought I was close. Left me at 8.20am. DTwin1 born 8.35. In a toilet behind a locked door. Umbilical cord broke plus he wasn't breathing. I was bleeding heavily and obviously still in labour with DTwin2. Managed to stagger into a corridor holding DT1 who was now blue and not moving. Eventually attracted attention of staff. Suddenly I'm bundled into a delivery suite with 2 MWs, 2 consultant obstetricians, 2 consultant paeds and a couple of others. Twins needed 2w NICU stay including MRI for DTwin 1. 8 weeks follow up specialist nursing care at home. 18 months of DTwin 1 being under a specialist paeds consultant at the hospital.

Run that argument about NHS resource by me again.....?

@SouthLondonMum22 "A full term fetus doesn't have the same rights as you and me until birth. What a woman does with her body is ultimately her choice including getting drunk if she's full term which also isn't illegal."

So what's the point of getting pregnant if you don't give a shit whether the child is born dead or alive or with disabilities? I mean, if you deliberately conceive (as opposed to being raped or coerced) then surely the only goal is to produce a healthy child. There is no other objective to planning a pregnancy that I can see.

That’s not the reasoning I was suggesting, I think you’ve misunderstood my post. I don’t support free birthing at all, I think it’s dangerous. I was pointing out that giving birth has had medical intervention for thousands of years and is a necessity and has been for a long time. Without earlier advances in medicine and treatment we wouldn’t be where we are today. My post doesn’t suggest that we head back to the caves, it shows that humans devised methods to help women give birth years ago and that the PP who suggested humans would have become extinct is not well educated in her post.

Twins are a lot more high risk than singleton births, if you’d had them in the toilet at home there wouldn’t have been a NICU round the corner

The writer is worse than an anti vaxxer which is abhorrent in my view

The entirety of a birth seems to boil down to “with the benefit of hindsight x should have happened and I wish I’d done y”
but ultimately, that there are more patients after the process than before is what counts as the win

and for the vast majority of women, that's exactly what happens. No laws controlling a woman's body because she is pregnant are necessary.

Choices in one's care as you describe here are not the same. Your mother was given two valid and safe pathways. She could choose the option that worked best for her. It would not have gone so well if she'd for example chosen to follow someone like Belle Gibson and told her consultant to eff off.

This discussion was about midwife attended home births, which one poster is suggesting should not be offered on the NHS.

Again you're quoting me as if I'm responding about a freebirth when I'm responding to a poster about a medically attended homebirth.

Sorry Red, I was agreeing with you here :)

I clearly drew a distinction in my post between the legal situation and the morality of it.

i don’t believe it’s morally justified that a full term baby has no right to life.

I don’t believe that ‘it’s a woman’s body’ means the adult’s bodily autonomy takes preference over the right to life of a full term baby.

People reciting mantra like about it being a woman’s body but refusing to even address the morality of sacrificing another human life to this, do not impress me. It’s intellectual and moral cowardice at its worst.

To be honest, I think the people who think like that are the same type of people who think that a c-section is "cheating". My sister had to have a c-section and I was in awe of her, it's a gruelling recovery.

I'm glad you added that last bit coz I was gonna say that's not what I'm saying 😅

Free birthing definetly isn't for me, everytime I've given birth I've been frightened one of us will die and ive been really grateful to have a team around me just incase

She would've been entitled to make that choice though. No one would've held her down and given her radiation or any other treatment against her will.

Consent is important in healthcare and that doesn't change when a woman is pregnant.

I think the argument (as in my own dangerous hospital birth) is that people claim these hospitals are such safe places to give birth in when a lot of women get ignored, dangerous care and injured (and their babies put at risk) in hospitals.

This poster was showing how her twins' birth was dangerous precisely because she was ignored by hospital staff (common) whereas it might not have looked like that with a midwife who was only attending her birth at home (and could have started emergency care and called an ambulance). If this poster had fainted or haemorrhaged behind the toilet door in the hospital with no one checking in on her, her baby would very likely have died.

Yeah, thanks, pretty aware of the risks of multiple birth seeing as I've been through it.

The point is - hospital births are not necessarily safe for a range of reasons.

And - the MW who did my home birth had also done HBs for multiple mums. The twins would not have needed NICU at all had they not had the significantly adverse birth experience they did have, with oxygen deprivation, etc. With a HB they would have had a MW at the delivery.

I don't regret giving birth in hospital. I made the best decision I could at the time. It also ended up being a decision that could have killed all three of us.

That’s the whole thing from my experience. It’s as well as could have been but it was shit

Unless There is actual medical negligence playing what if what if is the road to madness

Yeah - but abortion...

Many of the deaths were stillborn (after being f*cked over by the failure to birth properly)

So technically, given they died in the womb, apart from the mums desire to have the child, the effect on the baby/foetus is no different.

So your argument holds weight only if you disagree with abortion.

No??

Good god what rubbish. So many women used to die giving birth. Thank goodness for medical intervention! It has saved millions of lives of women and babies.

Childbirth is dangerous. It’s like we’ve actually forgotten this at the
moment.