Ok, now mine - submission to the Senate Committee

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,

I think more personal accounts are good right now. This is the second round of submissions, they would have all the stats and figures from all the birth orgs and things like that - now they need to hear from birthing women and a more personal perspective - and they need to know we are not stupid and definitely not pushovers!!!!

That was really great Maya.

I used some of the one on the bellybelly facebook page and added a bit of my story with it. This is what I wrote:


I am writing to you today because I feel strongly about the proposed legislation that will stop independent midwives from practising in this country.

I myself am not a homebirther but I have used the services of an independent midwife when I birthed my third child this year. I am what is called a VBACer. A woman who has had a Vaginal Birth After Caesarean, in fact after 2 caesareans. I employed an independent midwife to care for me at home while labouring before going to hospital to birth my baby where the independent midwife then acted as a birth support person. If I had have just used the hospital and my obstetricians current model of care I would have ended up being pushed into another caesarean section which was NOT MY CHOICE. So even though I did not have a homebirth I still needed the services of an independent midwife. If this legislation is passed, women like me who want to have a vaginal birth after caesarean will have a hard time achieving the birth we so badly want as it is not widley supported in the obstetric community. So how do we VBACing women get the birth we want when the independent midwives who support us need permission from the obstetricians and hospitals that generally discourage and sometimes flat out refuse to support our chosen birth prefrence?? I want to be able chose who I have to support the birth of my next baby. Not be told!!

Women’s rights matter. Please do not put the interests of medical industry $$$$ ahead of the rights of mothers and families

Where have the reproductive rights of women gone? What about the established legal concepts of right of refusal/informed consent?

Where to give birth, and who attends, is a medical decision appropriately decided upon by the mother or family, not big government and big medical associations.

If a pregnant woman is competent and informed, it is her decision to make.

Women should be able make decisions about their own care, rather than be forced to meet the needs of practitioners and organisational convenience which happens when giving birth in a hospital.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon plans to fund midwifery care under Medicare, something sorely needed. She has however excluded homebirth. She did this against all evidence and the express wishes of the women of Australia across two enquiries, one that broke a Senate record on the number of submissions received. This is not acting in the best interests of Australian society, this is acting for the best interests of the medical industry.

Denying independent midwives registration won't stop them from using their skills to support women during birth or from helping women birth at home. It will simply increase the risks they take doing so. It will be backyard abortion all over again – complete with shonky providers, death and suffering – except this time it's backyard birth.

Women need medical guidance, in the form of proper pre-natal care to know if home birth is a safe option for them. Professional, experienced, independent midwives can offer this advice, and a safe and secure environment for low-risk women who birth at home.

Will politicians continue to be more responsive to those with deep vested interest in maternity services? It is time to step up and listen to women, the very people for whom these so called reforms are proposed.

Homebirth or hospital birth, it is the woman’s choice not the government or the medical industry.