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 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.

@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.

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

Right, yes, I was quite angry when I wrote that post (still am) but to bring the nuances into it: ideally, I'd want to see free birth completely banned, however I don't want to criminalise mothers unnecessarily so the first priority should be to come down hard on anyone and any organisation or website that promotes this seriously unsafe practice. I recognise the difficult question of individual agency but there is also the duty of care for and potential endangerment of a baby (by the point of birth, this is a baby we are talking about).
For example, in the article, the criminal for me is 100% the 'guru' and I see the mother as brainwashed. Very often in cult-like situations, you will find victims who were abused also ended up being perpetrators of abuse because they were the puppets of a predator. It's a similar situation here.

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.

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).

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?

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!

Why SHOULD it be there?

Broadly I think women should be able to take risks with their own bodies

The state doesn't agree with you. And it's not just women - all adults are restricted in what they can do with their own body.

God that is so sad @Fundays12 A baby's life ruined because of ignorance, and stupidity, quite frankly.

I'm not sure if it was a no medical staff scenario, but a hippy woman who moved to my rural area opted to have a home birth, first time, older mother. She was into all the things you'd expect - holistic 'natural' treatments, making posts on Instagram saying how women have been scared into hospital births, it's mostly patriarchal scaremongering and on and on.

I noticed she was quiet for a while online, and a few weeks after birth posted that she and her baby were in such a dire position that she had to be rushed into hospital and were in danger of not surviving. Either her, her baby, or both, can't remember now. She lives at least 45mins from the nearest hospital, so it would have taken them a while to get there and then get her back to the hospital. I can't remember her exact wording, but it seems like she was tramuatised by the whole, event, not surprisingly and it was so far from the home waterbirth + candles type scenario she had planned for.

Because people have right to some choice in their care?

Right let's take another example
When I was younger I had some pretty bad skin issues
I was given some options for care ranging from antibiotics, topical something and roaccutane. The choice which one I wanted to try was mine and I made that choice guided by the dermatologist.

Another example
My mother had breast cancer. It was caught early so she was lucky in that she had some options in her care. They could remove the lump and some extra tissue and give radiation which would be an easier recovery bit require longer monitoring or they could do a slightly more aggressive approach (I forget the exact details as she didn't choose this). Guided by her care providers she made a choice for her own care.

Do you understand this? People have choices in their care.

Also as I've mentioned before homebirths can help free up capacity in the hospitals to help avoid situations like being turned away to another hospital an hour away or giving birth in triage.

To summarise choice guided by medical professionals is a good thing. Although you may just be one of those people that struggle to understand when other people feel differently to you.

Absolutely. I also think we have so much further to go in making hospital births safe and caring and not dehumanising with far too many incidences of women being violated without their consent. I'd like to think if the overwhelming majority of women who had hospital births were given proper, informed choices in their care with good levels of compassionate staffing etc then fewer people would make irrational and dangerous decisions like freebirthing.

My first hospital birth was such a traumatic shit show, I can really understand why some women opt out. Also, both my baby and me might have died during my hospital birth had my husband not constantly advocated for us.

The unassisted / natural birth crowd are all about survival numbers, and not about individual women's suffering. Much like the worst of patriarchal thinking, actually.

Well, for similar reasons that palliative home care is offered. Because it many circumstances it can be beneficial for people and their families Should everyone with a serious illness be in a hospice?

It is clear legally and morally that the mother has consent over her own medical care and this is an absolute. Look at the shit show created in countries without this principle.

Women who are empowered to be part of their own medical care can make evidence based safe choices. There are many problems with our maternity services and they all come from not putting women’s well being at the heart of care. The rise of free birth narratives is inevitable when medical care has been so poor. Both are a huge issue and taking women’s rights away won’t make anyone’s health or medical care better.

You don’t see how they’re different?

Do you really want to lose the concept of consent? It barely exists in childbirth now, but if you ban free birthing, women will lose any rights they now have.

Same here. Those who haven't been through the trauma of being very close to losing a baby at birth can't understand the stark horrors.
My husband was left in the delivery room alone after baby and I were run across the corridor to the operating theatre for an emergency c-section, with the last words being 'not sure if either are going to make it'.

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.

Please lay it out for me. Although another poster has already made a much better argument than me around medical choice so perhaps worth responding to them instead.

Getting drunk is a questionable choice but not remotely in the same league as the so-called 'free' birthing.
Let's have a quick thought experiment: do you think for example that a sky diving school that had a mortality rate of 3 in 1000 jumps should be allowed to continue to operate? (not the exact % of unplanned unassisted home birth rates but it's something along those lines)

You think humans were alive millions of years ago 😂
There has been medical intervention in birth for thousands of years, the Egyptians used forceps, c sections have been used for equally as long.

And with that reasoning, you can just about throw any medical advances into the bin and head back to the caves.

Well no... because if a mother dies following childbirth, then the baby has already been born...

Do you understand how evolution and extinction work?