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.

I completely agree with your point re abortion here. But one of the more disturbing aspects of this article for me is the misinformation & pressure around assisting breathing after the baby is born. In several of the examples given, there was a withholding of assistance after birth and one of the influencers told women to lie about babies being stillborn vs dying shortly after birth.

Oh and I’d be dead with zero children without medical intervention. And I’m not unusual.

And have forgotten / don’t know until after the event how incredibly visceral it is

But your instinct is not to ban FSB (the organisation), or prosecute the shysters behind it, but to ban the practice of freebirthing (which sometimes happens accidentally, and which is not completely unsafe). In effect giving the medical profession dominion over women's reproduction.

Also it concerns me that you think so little of these women that you think they have no free will and have been manipulated. And also that you attribute no negligence or stupidity to them.

It echos the "women are so stupid and can't be trusted with anything serious" BS that i lived through. And it annoys me when stupid people get only sympathy - there is so much information available but they chose to pay money to be manipulated...

Abortion isn't allowed at full term- the legislation is misunderstood here I think. Abortions for medical reasons beyond the viability 'cutoff' are extremely painful and complex cases. By the way, decriminalising abortion does not mean giving anyone the right to dispose of their babies at full term. The whole abortion argument does not apply here. Instead, what we have with these free birth 'gurus' is a bunch of vultures misleading women to the point that they end up losing their much-wanted child. It's especially pernicious considering that the mothers are probably all thinking they're doing the best for their child. It's stupid, dangerous and entirely avoidable. Abortion is an entirely different set of questions.

They were absolutely manipulated. I think anyone can be groomed if we're unlucky enough to fall into the clutches of predators at a vulnerable time in our life. And if you read my posts, I've already explained who I'd criminalise.

But surely freebirthing isn’t about doing the best for the child? It’s all about the experience for the mother and is very fixed on childbirth itself. That’s what these birth gurus are selling to women, and what they’re seeking?

We don't ban drinking while pregnant
Or smoking or doing drugs
Or abortion

All these things involve a helpless infant.

The only thing that differentiates this is that a healthy child was desired and not delivered.

Dont get me wrong, FSB are shysters and I'd happily prosecute them, but that's a different thing to banning the practice...

BTW, I often see people skiing with an infant strapped to their back or front. I wouldn't do it but it seems we permit parental responsibility.

On that i totally agree!!!

The group were/are nutters.
As far as I'm concerned they should be prosecuted for falsely practicing medicine and/or taking millions from unsuspecting mothers.

I have read your posts and you've clarified you would ban freebirthing, even if there was an emphasis on prosecuting organisations giving misinformation, how would this not end up criminalising the mothers?

Edited to clarify - I broadly agree re criminalising misinformation but I don't see how you can ban the practice without criminalising mothers and there have been plenty of examples given of how this could affect eg. precipitous births

I don't think babies have any legal rights at all until they are actually born

Fair enough.

If I agree that they were manipulated does that mean that they are innocent of infanticide? Because they paid a lot of money to be manipulated.

If a man is manipulated by incels into sexual assault does that make him innocent of the crime?

I'm sorry but I think that a mother owes her unborn child a duty of care.

I drew a clear distinction in my post between the legal position and the morality of the issue.

Abortion does not involve a helpless infant. That's a terrible way to put it.
Drinking, smoking and doing drugs: there are very clear recommendations around this. We don't criminalise mothers for doing those things but in cases where a pregnant woman is the victim of a crime and the foetus was harmed or lost, the law considers it an aggravating factor for the perp. Here's a summary thanks to chat gpt: The law recognises that if a pregnant woman is harmed, and the unborn child is harmed (for example through assault of the mother resulting in loss of pregnancy), that may aggravate the offence. The Hansard record states:
“Injury to a foetus, if proved, is likely to be treated in law as an injury to the mother and prosecutable under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The loss of an unborn child may also be taken into account as an aggravating factor…” Hansard
For example, in domestic abuse settings or assaults, courts may consider pregnancy (or harming the unborn child) as heightening the seriousness of the offence. A briefing noted that “pregnancy and loss of the unborn child might be considered aggravating due to the potential vulnerability of the victim”.

I think that what those free birthing 'communities' do to those pregnant women is a form of assault.

That wasn’t the argument fwiw.

I think all women would want to prioritise their baby’s safety as well as their own safety.

The problem is they are sometimes being misled about what’s safe. Free birthing has the potential to be very unsafe. Childbirth has always been risky for women and remains so today. It’s clear from what OP linked that women were being misinformed about their risk.

Of course she does owe her unborn child duty of care.
The fact she paid £££ to a cult does not absolve her of responsibility but as I mentioned upthread, you can both be the victim of a cult and have been manipulated into doing things or making choices you otherwise wouldn't have done. I think that's what happened here.

Sounds almost medieval. They were very into women suffering during childbirth, because of Eve's transgressions, all the way up into Victorian times when anesthetics were invented, and there was a bit of religious backlash against it then.

I really think that if all women were guaranteed a hospital birth where it was comfortable, their partners could reasonably sleep over night, they had access to proper food, they had access to birth pools, the midwives were responsive, they were not pressured into continuous monitoring or internal examinations if they didn't want them, postnatal rooms were single AND if things started to go tits up they were given real, properly informed choices (including the choice to refuse intervention) ... the amount of freebirths would be even more miniscule.

Of course, that would take proper resourcing and a complete overhaul of the appalling attitudes that some medical professionals have about birthing mothers.

I support women who choose to have an abortion within the limits defined in law. My post was in response to a poster who compared women choosing to free birth to people who choose to do dangerous things and risk their own lives quite legally.

The babies referred to in the Guardian article who died or who suffered permanent disabilities were all much wanted babies whose mothers genuinely thought they were doing the right thing.

The two women ex-doula Emilee Saldaya and fellow ex-doula Yolande Norris-Clark are the ones to blame for the babies' deaths and disabilities and they sound dangerously unhinged:

'Friends say Saldaya often took her ideological cues from her business partner. After Norris-Clark decided she did not believe in gravity, Saldaya announced she was no longer “round [Earth] committed”. When Norris-Clark said she no longer believed in germ theory, Saldaya told friends she did not wash her hands. When Norris-Clark said she no longer identified as a feminist and wished to submit to her husband, Saldaya quietly stopped marketing the podcast as “radical feminist”.

After Norris-Clark tacked rightwards politically, Saldaya followed. She began to promote wild pregnancy, a term Norris-Clark invented, meaning pregnancy without any prenatal care'.

Home births with a qualified midwife in attendance bear no resemblance to what happened to these women who were told not to have any checks or scans during pregnancy and who were left to labour alone, in some cases for more than seven days.

Actually most of that sounds like the MLU that DS was born in. The birthing rooms were Individual with pools, birthing balls etc and an en suite bathroom

After you had a choice of how long you could stay ( not sure if fathers could as DS born at 7am and I didn't stay overnight) up to 10 days.They even had washable nappies for the babies and midwives around to help with breastfeeding or if you chose to bottle feed there was small prepared bottles

Although some posters on here wouldn't like that place either as if there were complications then its a trip to another hospital for consultant led care

Freebirthing is very dangerous, but I don't think it should be made illegal. The problem is, outlawing it would inevitably result in criminalising innocent women like those who give birth very quickly before they can get medical care, or vulnerable women and young girls with concealed or unrecognised pregnancies.
I also suspect that some of the women who are drawn to freebirthing are struggling with birth trauma from previous experiences, or other trauma. Given how often women are treated badly by midwives, and all the maternity scandals we hear about, they need proper support, not to be arrested.
I do think the groups promoting it should absolutely be banned though.

That's heartbreaking, and actual murder (or it should be.)

DS was fine after birth but his oxygen levels dropped when we were in the recovery room so he was given oxygen (on this fancy cot that sort of blew it over him.) He nearly got taken off to SCBU (and was two days later for something different) but they got them up enough for him to spend the first night with me. That was slightly worrying!

Sounds amazing! Unfortunately many people don't get this great experience, particularly those who are deemed high risk.

Also, even though it's unpalatable, I think if a woman in an MLU is experiencing complications but she wants to refuse being transferred, her wishes should be honoured. A lot of these places sort of insinuate that you're not "allowed" to stay if there are problems which I think possibly pushes some women to attempt very risky things like freebirth.