In 1938 Hitler outlawed home education in Germany. The idea of institutionalised schooling for children was first introduced in Germany not to improve children’s education but because the Prussian leaders of the time recognised the efficacy of spreading propaganda to children. They knew that institutionalising education would ensure a higher level of control over the children who would grow up to become the soldiers, leaders and workers of Germany’s future. At the root of Prussian rhetoric of the time were the Prussian ideals of intolerance, racism, and anti-Semitism. As we know, this propaganda campaign was so successful that it gave birth to Adolf Hitler and resulted in the torture and death of millions of people. Our family tree is littered with stars of David to reflect the number of ancestors who lost their lives in Nazi death camps, in forced-labour camps and on the front lines in Russia.

Despite its controversial origins, the idea of spreading propaganda through schools took off and is now a common and effective way to change a population’s actions and paradigms. As a public relations practitioner and a parent, I well know the value in using schools to ensure greater take up of a public education initiative. When my kids come home from school laden with goodies—stickers, posters and erasers all sporting the latest government message about wearing seatbelts, walking safely to school, saving water or brushing teeth I know that the propaganda machine is well and truly oiled and that my kids will unconsciously absorb the catchy phrases and carefully orchestrated ideals the government wishes them to internalise. Really, state-based schooling is more about control than it is about fostering an independent, thinking human being.

However there is a dark side to any movement towards controlling a population’s ideas and actions. In Germany today, because of Hitler’s anti-home education law, German families can be prosecuted, jailed and have their children removed from their care. One such family had to flee the country last year—loving parents who just wanted the freedom to educate their children as they saw best. It is hard to believe that this is possible in what is now a democratic country. However, when you see the history behind this paradigm, you can understand how generations have been influenced by one, seemingly insignificant law that impacted on a small percentage of the population.

The rights of self-determination and autonomy are inherent in any true democracy. However, as the years go by I can’t help but think that democracy is slipping away from us at an ever-increasing rate.

This blog isn’t really about home education and the propaganda machine. What it is about is showing the impact of government control on the autonomy of individuals.

The Australian Government is currently considering legislation to ensure all health practitioners are registered. On the surface, this seems like a good thing and in many ways it is. However, the dark side of this reform is that it is being used as an efficient way of controlling women’s access to homebirth midwifery. The draft legislation not only penalises midwives who dare to defy it to the tune of $30,000 plus deregistration, it also penalises women and any organisation that promotes homebirth midwifery or is seen to instigate homebirth midwifery.

As of July 1 next year, Birth Matters, the journal I have lovingly edited for the past two years, will no longer be able to legally print the beautiful photographs and stories of women. To do so would put these women and their midwives in jeopardy and may result in the Journal incurring a $30,000 fine. Any midwifery blogs about attending homebirths will disappear and our stories, our folklore will be lost.

I have no doubt that this is the intention behind this legislation, that it is designed not just to control how and where women give birth but to quash the rhetoric that supports the notion of safe and beautiful birth at home. If this legislation is passed successfully, women will be the losers. Once again our rights to self-determination will be eroded. While homebirth with a midwife has been difficult in the past ten years, it will be more so now. For instance, women who could get prescription medications from a sympathetic GP for a homebirth will now not be able to do so. If the GP does this, they could be registered and prosecuted, the woman could be reported and prosecuted and their midwife deregistered and prosecuted.

Just like the family that fled from Germany to the UK last year because they chose to home educate their children, women will flee Australia to give birth in the UK and New Zealand so that they can birth at “home” safely with a trained attendant. Even if you view homebirth as something that only affects a minority of women, is this the kind of society you want your daughters to grow up in? One which forces them to subject to government control over their basic human right to choose where and with whom they give birth? Do we really want them to submit to a “just lie down and open your legs like a good girl because we’re doing what is best for you” paradigm?

The government can’t argue away the inherent rights of women on the basis of safety. There is absolutely no evidence that hospitals are a safer place to give birth for normal healthy women. Indeed, given the stories we hear day in and day out, it is clear that what happens on the birth front is neither safe nor respectful of women’s right to autonomy over their bodies. While I welcome the opportunity for midwives to attend women privately in a hospital or birth centre, I abhor the notion that this absolves the government from protecting those women who still want to birth at home for whatever reason—cultural, spiritual, physical or social.

One thing I can guarantee, women will continue to fight for their birth rite and rights because to outlaw the normal function of their bodies at home is not only absurd but an injustice. We are entering a brave new world where secret homebirth societies will flourish and midwives will form knitting circles in jail. This fight is only just beginning. I will see you on the birth front!

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?

The following article was first published in the Winter, 2008 edition of Kindred Magazine (www.kindredmedia.com.au).

The saying “we are our own worst enemies” has never been truer than when applied to conversations about birth.

There’s a lot of unnecessary guilt and blame surrounding birth. Every time a new piece of research hits the press a war of words ensues between polarised stakeholders—obstetricians, midwives, researchers, paediatricians, mothers, fathers and even people who don’t desire to “breed” at all.

Women who’ve had elective caesareans feel defensive because a compelling body of evidence has revealed that elective caesareans for no medical reason are more harmful to babies and mothers than vaginal birth. In addition, recent evidence showing the compounded risks for the mother and any future babies she might have has rocked the obstetric world.

Women who have had good outcomes from caesareans get hot under the maternity bra straps because negative reports about the operation translate as “you’ve made a bad choice,” instead of “you were given bad advice and/or poor support.” So, women take on more guilt because they feel like they’ve been labelled as bad mothers for agreeing to an operation they thought was best for them and their babies.

On the other end of the spectrum, the diminishing number of women who manage to come out of birth unscathed by medical interventions feel defensive too. Their beef is with those pesky too-posh-to-push Lexus drivers and their private obstetricians who declare that anyone who has a vaginal birth is either lucky, stupid, selfish or downright dangerous.

And it doesn’t end there. Women who give birth in hospital feel criticised by women who choose to birth at home. Women who thank their lucky stars their emergency caesarean saved their baby feel it their duty to give other women some perspective. Forums are filled with women telling those who come out of a caesarean birth feeling mugged, raped and left for dead they should just be thankful for a live baby and get over it.

What is missing here? In my six years as an advocate for informed choice in birth I have seen very little empathy from people in general—whether they be mothers, fathers, doctors or midwives. They all have different and personal perspectives on birth but there seems to be very little understanding of what makes birth good or bad and why it matters at all.

If a woman is brave enough to admit that she feels like a train wreck after a caesarean birth she is told to suck it up and get on with looking after her new baby. She is lectured about how lucky she is to live in a first world country where medical intervention saves lives. Yet, how can a woman get over it, if she is never allowed to process something she obviously feels is significant to her? Why should she bottle up her grief and live with the incredible guilt that comes when you feel bad about a life event that is supposed to bring such joy? –More guilt and a ticket to poor mental health with all its repercussions.

Conversely, why is it that we accuse women of being cowards because they are fearful of childbirth. These women need to be listened to, acknowledged and helped. Recent research has shown that more than 43 percent of women who choose elective caesarean have a clinically significant fear of childbirth. The sad truth is that surgery won’t heal the emotional wounds that underly childbirth fear. It can’t be cut away. It needs to be explored. But how often does this happen when the expert listening is a surgeon and not a counsellor or psychologist let alone one who understands the impact of birth?

Perhaps we need to redirect our angst, not at each other but at a health care system that has put birth into hospitals with sick people and turned it into a disease that needs to be contained with machines that go “ping,” time limits, drugs, and surgery.

As someone who was born by caesarean, I know that birth matters. My mother was deeply affected by her experience and I was never allowed to forget it. I’ve also been the train wreck after a nasty caesarean experience, had a good elective caesarean experience and felt the amazing power of normal natural birth. Subsequently, when discussing birth I often feel like the teenager stuck in the middle of arguing parents. It is true I probably wouldn’t be here if my mother hadn’t had her emergency caesarean but I nearly didn’t make it after my eldest son’s avoidable caesarean-gone-wrong left me traumatised and unable to cope. Should I now feel guilty because I’m not grateful for that?

When I did finally give birth normally with my last child I realised how important birth was to me as a woman and a mother. Whether it was that surge of hormones as I drank in my little one’s eyes or the high from finishing the marathon-like labour I don’t know. But I do know it made me stronger to face the challenges mothering has brought and I refuse to feel guilty for wanting every birthing woman to feel like that.

Only a system-wide rethink about how birth is funded and managed can bring about a change in women’s and practitioners’ thinking about birth. When women (and their babies) are at the centre of care rather than passive recipients, when they are clients rather than patients, our predominant conversations about birth might just change from being about how dangerous birth is to how great it should be. And maybe we’ll stop taking the blame for a system that has set us up to feel like it is all our fault. It is time to remove the guilt from birth.

Reference:

Wiklund, I., G. Edman, et al. (2008). Expectation and experiences of childbirth in primiparae with caesarean section. BJOG. 115: 324-331.