I was going to post mine in one of the other threads to save threads, but decided to leave those ones as stand-alone threads with their own comments
Mine is a bit different from my more academically-flavoured submissions in the past, and just reads as a personal response to the stupidity being proposed.


I am writing to express my dismay at the proposed amendments to the Midwifery legislation.
It is nonsensical to restrict midwives from privately attending homebirths if they do not have ‘permission’ from a GP or obstetrician to do so. First of all, the AMA and RANZCOG have an official policy of not supporting homebirths and purporting them to be more dangerous than hospital births, contrary to all evidence and best-practice. They do not believe in freedom of choice for birthing women and this is coloured by economic agenda that has a long history in the Western world. It is ludicrous to expect ‘collaboration’ when only the midwife has the intention of supporting the homebirth – so much so that it cannot really be called ‘collaboration’ at all, except in words. Second of all, there are so few GP’s and/or obstetricians who DO support homebirth and believe in its merits that most women who wish to homebirth who already find it difficult to find support will find even less scope for achieving self-determination. There will be ‘doctor shopping’ and the very few GP’s who support homebirth will be cornering ‘the market’. Surely this is against the best interests of the AMA? Not that I have any intention of arguing for the best interests of the AMA or RANZCOG, except to see the absolute flawed logic to this push by Dr Pesce.
In October I had my first homebirth. It was not my first birth and it was in very close hindsight after the birth of my first child in my local Family Birth Centre that I realised I had wasted public resources by giving birth outside of the home. I did not need to be in medicalised environs, or across the hall from one. My recent experience was absolutely perfect and went without a single hitch.
If hospital-based homebirth had been available, I would not have qualified because I had a slight post-partum haemmorage with my first birth. I would not have been ‘allowed’ to birth my daughter peacefully, with my son present and swimming in the birth pool, with a transfer only to my couch and then to my bed. I would have been denied the natural and exclusively feminine right to birth according to my mammalian instincts.
When I attended the Birth Rights Rally in Canberra in September I was 34 weeks pregnant. My mother told me that my grandmother was lucky not to have to deal with this kind of bureaucracy when she gave birth to NINE children (all living into adulthood) with the aid of the village doulas, in a small town in Honduras, Central America. Now, surely, if my grandmother could birth all her children in a developing country over a period of 20 years (being rather a mature woman for her last birth), women in Australia are capable of birthing their children supervised by the capable wisdom and skill of independent midwives who DO NOT require endorsement (this is what it is, not ‘collaboration’) by some concept of a higher power? Consider, also, that no independent midwife has ever had legal proceedings brought against her for malpractice in the case of an unfortunate outcome. Where outcomes are tragically unavoidable, the continuity of care provided to the birthing woman engenders such trust that all parties know negligence has not been a factor.
Women in Australia cannot be so physiologically diverse from women in Holland, Sweden, Britain and Canada that we are somehow inherently inferior and require medicalised treatment to birth our peculiar babies. Yet this is the argument Dr Pesce presents, essentially, when he speaks against homebirth. It is a ridiculous assertion that has no basis in fact or worldwide research. The ‘research’ he cites is either condemned on methodological grounds or does not exist – he is never challenged on his ‘figures’ when he speaks. How is it that we accept the statistics of a man who has never attended a homebirth and the government and we tell midwives with years of experience in assisting normal, breech, twin, still, and VBAC births that they must now seek the final say of a GP who has most likely never attended a homebirth? Homebirth is not a religion to be regarded with great scepticism, it is a practice as old as humanity. It is all that most birthing women need. There is a place for medicalisation in birth – about 10% of births, as cited by the World Health Organisation, which has access to the statistics of birth outcomes the world over.
The legitimacy of a homebirth is not determined by a GP or obstetrician who expects something to go wrong and is trained in complications. It should be determined by the birthing woman. Women who choose homebirth are the most birth-educated women and do not need to be insulted by the patriarchy that reigns in Westernised, medicalised maternity services.
Please save homebirth from the regime RANZCOG has pushed forward for their own economic and political gain. Please allow it to be accessible to all women who choose homebirth with an experienced and qualified midwife. If you do not defeat this proposal there will be far more unattended homebirths, far more ‘risk’ and far more distrust of the medical fraternity than ever before. This legislation is an insult to any thinking woman’s intelligent and instinct.
Yours sincerely,