There aren’t too many issues that would compel me to plan a last minute road trip to Canberra but when I read the draft legislation on registration of midwives, I realised that I had to go and be among the many mums and babies, small children and midwives doing just the same.

My passion for this cause doesn’t stem from my own experience of homebirth because I’ve never had a homebirth. My passion extends from my births, yes… but also from my anger that women’s rights are being completely eroded by this legislation. The legislation was put in place to protect consumers but what it is doing instead is putting a stranglehold on midwifery practice and ensuring it will forever be under the thumb of medical dominance.

It makes my skin crawl to think that midwives and women may be slapped with a $30,000 fine if they went ahead with a planned homebirth. And what of all the unplanned homebirths? What happens to a woman who planns a hospital birth but slips a baby out at home while her midwife is walking through the door? This legislation is unjust, and really, un-enforceable! Are they really going to fill jails with knitting circles full of wise women? It just makes no sense!

So, I am planning a trip to Canberra in September and am taking son no. 1 with me to give him insight into our democratic process. Only I don’t feel like I live in a democracy at the moment. Any government that thinks it can legislate away a basic human right cannot really call itself a democracy.

The freedom to choose what we do with our bodies is a basic human right and a basic tenet of democracy. What is happening to childbirth in Australia will force women to give birth in an institution and this may have extremely detrimental consequences for some women.

To be fair, perhaps the government should consider issuing fines to women who elect to have a caesarean for no medical reason… but then, that would be absurd wouldn’t it? So why is it any less so for a homebirth?