By Tracy G. Cassels
We like to think of our society as constantly moving ‘forwards’. We gain more rights, society becomes more equal, and we admit to problems passed and insist they will not happen again. However, one realm where we seem to be heading backwards is that of birth. Today, women are fighting for the right to birth at home, interventions are at an all-time high, and midwives are being shunted to the side by the medical community. It’s a sad state of affairs, and one that deserves our attention.
In lieu of this, I have decided to share something that I had thought was really just a great piece of personal history to have for me, but I now believe it can offer advice, support, and information for those fighting to get women the choices they deserve when it comes to birth. Starting today I will start sharing some pdfs of an old newspaper that was written and distributed in the 1980s in Ontario, Canada – Re: Birth. It was created by a group called Choices in Childbirth and the goal was to promote women’s options for their births (my mother belonged and contributed which is why I have the copies and why they mean so much to me). At the time, having a homebirth was illegal in Ontario and by default so was having a midwife as they did not have hospital privileges (although midwifery itself was not illegal). The women and men who created this newspaper were also actively involved in the political realm of fighting for birth choices; and they were successful in their efforts with women in Ontario now having licensed midwives or OBGYNs to choose from, homebirth as a safe and viable option, or a trip to the hospital or birthing centre.
I share this with the hope that it may provide helpful information for those continuing the fight in their hometowns, or at the very least will provide some very interesting reading. I have several editions (though not all as my mother couldn’t find some of them) and I will be posting them over the next while. Please feel free to download and share with anyone you think might be interested! I do believe we have a long way to go before birth returns to its place as a normal and natural state for woman and baby, but hopefully we’re on the way back.
HERE IS THE LINK FOR THE FIRST EDITION: Rebirth, Volume 1, Number 1
(The file is too large to upload here so I apologize for the external link, but it’s the only way! You can download the file once you open the link, which only leads you to Adobe so it’s legit.)
Question, how can/did they make homebirth illegal? That’s tossed about a lot in the US, usually by OBs or those misinformed by them, as in ‘oh, homebirth is illegal’, when what they really mean (provided they aren’t just lying to coherse someone) is ‘midwife attended homebirth is illegal’. In the US it’s generally considered impossible to criminalize homebirth itself because you’ll always have women who deliver precipitously, or who get stuck on the way to the hospital, or who didn’t even know they were pregnant so shrugged off labor pains as intense period cramps, or who had a previous very hard labor so an easy labor is shrugged off for Braxton Hicks. Anyway, since there is no real way to tell the difference between a women who mistook labor for braxton hicks and ended up delivering at home and a women who intentionally delivered at home, any attempt to make homebirth illegal would be uninforceable.
Personally I’m not a huge fan of UC births, but how do you actually go about making them lawfully illegal?
I suppose I should have stated “practically illegal”. First Ontario banned any doctors from attending home births – they threatened to revoke their license if they did so. Then midwives weren’t considered trained providers so they couldn’t deliver at home either. For women stuck, they weren’t charged, but if you did have one at home, I have been told you could have been charged if you didn’t transfer. In other words, you needed proof that there were no other options for you except to deliver at home and that seemed to have required a doctor on board with you who would testify there were no other options. So while it was illegal, there were obviously exceptions. The real problem came if you tried to do a homebirth and then had to transfer – you would give yourself away with that one. (Update: realized I didn’t mention how – I have been told it was the “child endangerment” charge that would go against the mother for attempting a homebirth that wasn’t attended by a medical professional.)