EU law on woman's rights during birth

[cantreachmytoes]

One World Birth

A film has been made about women's rights to choose the type of birth they want - hospital, home, midwife centre, whatever(!) - and their right to privacy during it, based on an EU law passed following a case brought by a Hungarian woman.

It features the UK, US, Chinese, Aussie presidents of their respective colleges of midwives, as well as human rights lawyers and others.

This is the abridged version (15 mins), the original is 1 hr.

Rhianna1980 - that was meant to be tongue in cheek although there is certainly some truth in it.

There certainly weren't the hospitals available then because the country was shattered by years of war plus the depression prior to that. Whether the hospitals were filled up with amputees I wouldn't know. It's worth pointing out that today other parts of the health service are extremely stretched and being cut to the bone, as probably anyone who has helped to nurse elderly relatives will be aware, so there is still some truth in my statement.

Midwifery has been regulated since 1902 with the aim of securing better education of midwives and regulating their practice, but until sufficient training schools were set up, the Central Midwives Board had to admit so called 'bona fide' midwives who were women of good character who had practiced for at least a year. By 1933 only 3% of women admitted to the roll were untrained, with the last one in this category finally being admitted in 1947. (Majorie Tew: Safer Childbirth?) By the time I am talking about, there must only have been a handful of such women left, so the vast majority of women would have been attended by a qualified midwife. E.g. my husband's grandmother paid 15/- for a qualified midwife to attend her in 1940. The Domiciliary Service was run by the Local Authority. This has all got absorbed into the NHS now, and I doubt whether it could ever come back, even if Local Authorities had the will to do so.

Then, as now, there is still nothing to say that you have to have a qualified midwife/doctor to attend you. As Xenia points out up thread you could still get your friends in to help. What they are not allowed to do is pass themselves off as qualified midwives.

Yes, the training was shorter - 1 year for qualified nurses or two years for non nurses, although at the same time, for example, a teaching certificate only took two years.

Anyone using hospitals for minor issues was seen as selfish at those times.
Maybe that's part of the problem now - the health authorities see women's health care as minor?