Birth rights and abortion rights are one and the same in the fight for women’s right to self determination and bodily sovereignty.
Recently both have received a pummelling in Australia with a woman being charged for terminating her own pregnancy, and now with the exposure of the draft legislation for the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law 2009. This document reveals proposed legislation that will effectively ban legal homebirth in Australia.
The underhanded way that the government has gone about it is by declaring that midwives attending homebirth without insurance will be struck off the register, face penalties of up to $30,000 and risk imprisonment, which you could almost agree with, I mean, every one else has it, right?, until you read on to discover that only midwives working within a hospital birthing program will be eligible for insurance. This, coupled with the laws that make it illegal for an unregistered midwife to attend in a medical capacity, will have the effect of outlawing homebirth.
Nested in the draft is a small section stating that a person may not “incite or direct a registered health practitioner to do anything, in the course of the practitioners’s practice of the health profession, that amounts to unprofessional conduct or professional misconduct”. Penalties for doing so are high – $30,000 for an individual. I am no lawyer, but it would seem to me that offering money to a midwife to attend a homebirth may well come under this clause in the draconian system proposed.
These words have galvanised me into action and over the last two days I have made submissions to the Women’s Electoral Lobby group, WRANA (Women’s Rights Action Network Australia), PILCH (Public Interest Legal Clearing House), MPs local and federal and even GetUp.
Apart from the obvious women’s rights issues on the table, with the rescinding of birth choices (and who could believe homebirth could become more difficult in Australia?), there is the terrible truth that banning homebirth will not stop homebirth, it will just stop it from being done with midwives – it will drive it underground - to the detriment of the health and well-being of women.
The pitiful truth about these proposed new laws is that they are going to serve the wrong people. They will serve birth surgeons and doctors (read men and more men). Not women. Homebirth is a viable and safe birth option, there are many studies that show this and many countries who embrace it as an integral part of their array of birth services. While very few women currently give birth at home in Australia (less than 1%), in countries who have full government support, the rates are very high – in Holland, as high as 30%.
It may seem like a storm in a teacup to people who are anti-homebirth, but the legislation will effect us all. Homebirth has been an anchor that has upheld the normal, natural process of birth, an antidote to the over medicalisation of birth and a counter to the spiraling caesarian rates. But going beyond birth, this is about bodily autonomy, about a woman’s right to the self determination of her health care needs, it is about our personal sovereignty. Any whittling down of our rights reduces and endangers us all.
As I have mentioned in a previous post – my homebirth was an important part of my recovery from trauma. It is essential that it remains an option for the many women who want it, and indeed, for the many women so deeply traumatised by their experience of birth in hospital, that they need it.
My daughter, joyfully birthed at home.
Please help Australian women by writing to your local and federal MPs, the newspaper, ring the radio, anything you can think of. Come and walk with us in Canberra, on September the 7th, in protest of the proposed legislation.
Read more at Joyous Birth (see this page for lots of links), Homebirth a Midwife Mutiny, Homebirth Australia, Hoyden About Town.
12 Comments
June 25, 2009 at 9:42 pm
It makes you wonder what country we actually live in? How can this be swept in, without much stir? Homebirth needs to remain a legal option ofr midwives and women.
(Feminamist for PM, I say!)
June 25, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Sarah Hanson-Young will be giving birth during division, in a mess of dried food, glitter and cut up paper, with the Speaker as birth support
Are you sure you want that for your country?
June 25, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I find myself at a place where I am so divided. I want to weep with feelings of helplessness and scream with frustration – and yet I MUST keep working. When that tragic day comes (because I believe it will) that the misogynists who run our country outlaw my bodily autonomy in birthing my children I have to believe that I did everything to rail against it, to prevent it from happening.
Thank you for helping to push me forward every day to do this. Your activism inspires my own.
June 28, 2009 at 10:39 am
Thanks Tami
It is hard to maintain the level of energy and optimism that action requires, I totally agree. I have only just come out of a period of apathy brought on by feeling that nothing can make a difference. September will not only be a great message to the gov, it will show the women involved in fighting this thing that they are not alone – one often feels very much alone when stuck in a house with kids, out of the political arena. We are not alone!
July 5, 2009 at 8:56 pm
How can it be that no-one seems to ‘get’ how invasive and controlling this is?? Our Government is removing our RIGHTS!! Why are not ALL women outraged about this?? Why is it that only a few can see the danger in the water, and not just the tiny white tip of the iceburg?
I will continue to fight long after this has settled, so I don’t know how anyone thinks that it will all just go away.
In years to come, when women shake their heads and ask ‘how did that happen?’ I wonder how many people will say “whoops, we figured it was your fight, not ours, sorry”
July 5, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Aaaah yes. So very well said, every word, Bec. It is a huge problem, the lack of cohesion between the different ages/stages/generations of feminists. Women during the child bearing stage are just so damn vulnerable and politically hamstrung, they/we need the support of the wider female community.
And Amen sister to the keep fighting bit. Ain’t gonna take this one lying back in stirrups either.
July 6, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I am a woman who has had both of my babies in hospital (wished I hadn’t) and feel passionately about my right to choose for myself, where I birth my children. This is absolutely unacceptable and I will not rest until I know I have done everything I possibly can to let our government and the broader public know what I think of this disgusting treatment of women. This will not only affect our generation but those to come and I for one can not sit back and let it happen.
July 8, 2009 at 10:00 am
Amen to that!! It is fantastic to hear support from the wider community – too many women think that because they don’t want to homebirth, it isn’t about them. Thank you for your clear vision and your comments. We will change things if we can stand together!
July 6, 2009 at 7:45 pm
I’ll be there in September, though I am now running through menopause, but I birthed mine at home in the 1980s – and two years ago, was with my own daughter in her home birthing
Losing the option breaks my heart….
July 26, 2009 at 8:50 am
Great post, this is quite simply a human rights issue, this back-door outlawing of independent midwifery is simply outrageous! Thanks for getting it out there, here’s hoping the government are listening….
July 31, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Thanks Selene
August 6, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I would like to encourage every woman out there to never let cultural norms, the economic climate, politics, laws, increasing technologisation of family life, beliefs, misinformation, scare tactics, expectations from family, friends, society or government, lack of freedom, the failure of democracy, oppression, persecution or ANYTHING else prevent you from choosing the safest, gentlest, wisest way to give birth, for the sake or your well-being, your baby’s well-being and that of you family and everyone in it.
Regardless of what the law will be from next July onwards, we need to see the bigger picture. Right around the world, natural values and feminine wisdom is being denigrated and marginalised. In every society where technology is advancing, natural living skills are being lost, sometimes irretrievably. In countries where this is not a mutually honouring balance between the wisdom of the masculine and the wisdom of the feminine, you see the feminine being dominated and vital wisdom and skills being trodden under foot.
Every woman knows deep in her heart and soul what she is capable of and what she needs to give birth safely. You can’t look at what is available, what is “allowed”, what is even “legal” and then try to work within those imposed parameters. You need to start with your own deep wisdom, your own vision of what you know is right and safe and good for you when you are birthing. And then – choose that. And do whatever you need to achieve that.
Underground or not, we women in Australia are part of a network of women in every country who are clinging onto the remnants of natural wisdom and knowledge, to preserve the love and gentleness and compassion needed to nuture our unborns, birth them safely, and parent them gently and kindly.
Don’t give up and don’t let any authority of home, church, state or peer group, dictate what is accepable for you. Access your own inner wisdom, then reach out to support, and feel the support of, women all around the world who instinctively know these things are too precious to lose and cannot be wrested from our possession so easily.