URGENT - Senate Inquiry re: complaints about midwives - closes Thursday

[loulabelle]

Done

[Yeddi]

I'm all for supporting this cause, but I have some concerns over the wording in the template. This line in particular:

This will force me into the hospital system or to choose to free birth.

I can so see there being two problems:
1. That we will be instantly dismissed as being anti-hospital, irrational and unbalanced in the other extreme, but our stance is not about being anti-hospital but pro birth choices for women. I think use of positive language rather than negative is always more powerful and influential.

2. I can see the potential for the later part about free birth being used by DOCS or similar against those who sent it, "Endangering their child" blah blah blah. Not saying that that is right at all, but I'd rather word in a way where it couldn't be used against me by some zealot.

Is there a better way of saying the same thing? Perhaps:

"Birth choices are important to women, and they should have the freedom to birth in their homes with a qualified midwife if they chose, respecting their fundemental human right of autonomy over their own bodies."

[BellyBelly]

You can edit it how you see fit. But I think the person who wrote it is trying to get across that they are messing with their choice, and they will have to make a decision they don't want. Women deserve options and the rate in which they are being taken away from us is disgusting. There's no time to provide a weak sided argument for these people, they keep making it worse restricting, restricting.... We're fighting constantly to be able to have the birth we want, not how they tell us it should be.... but its only a template - edit any of it how you see fit.

[Yeddi]

I never said anything about being passive and making a weak argument! If anything the edit I ended up sending was more in their faces because it was harder to write off. Anyway, done.

[Catherine]