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In 2010, during Gereb’s incarceration, Hungarian mother Anna Ternovsky was pregnant with her second child.  During the birth of her first child, she had been attended by midwife Agnes Gereb, and Ternovsky was incensed by the implication of Gereb’s case, that by criminalizing an independent midwife, women not free to choose the birth attendant of their choice.

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So Anna Ternovsky decided to take the Hungarian government to court.  At the European Court of Human Rights, Ternovsky argued that it is a fundamental right for all women to be granted the authority to choose the circumstances under which she gives birth.

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Anna Ternovsky won.  And this precedent-setting case could, I believe, have broad implications for women all over the world who continue to be threatened, coerced, lied to, and abused during the birth process.  This case also has major implications for independent birth attendants.

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My first two children were born in the presence of a Traditional Birth Attendant.  She remains my friend and mentor, and I love her.  After the birth of my second son, the politically motivated attacks on my TBA reached untold heights, and she spent several months in jail, thanks to the kind of persecution that Agnes Gereb has withstood.  All over the world, in fact, traditional birth attendants and independent midwives are being attacked by government-funded groups who see them as competition or as a threat to their organizations.

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This past weekend, I gathered in Moncton with 10 other amazing New Brunswick women, for a private screening of the documentary film, “Freedom for Birth”, which discusses Agnes Gereb’s case, and the fact that throughout the world, (and in Canada!) women, in our day and age of supposed liberation and equality, continue to be bullied, coerced, patronized, infantilized and abused during pregnancy and birth.

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Many of the women I met with in Moncton had given birth at home, some had given birth unassisted, several had given birth in the hospital, some had given birth in the presence of unlicensed, unregistered birth attendants.  What we all have in common, is the belief that women must be granted the power to make *all* of the decisions regarding pregnancy and birth.   The right to choose our birth is a fundamental human right, a major reproductive rights issue, and the sad fact is that birth freedom has been glaringly absent from the narrative of gender equality and women’s rights for far too long.

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I have personally experienced the reality of having no legitimate rights to my own birth first-hand, and I am made aware of the severity and universality of the problem on a constant basis, thanks to the many emails I receive from the readers of this blog.

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Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time.  It is really only in the past 100 years that birth has been regulated, owned, distributed, restricted, paternalized and institutionalized to the shocking degree that it is today.  As far as I am concerned, what has happened to birth is a complete affront to the rights women should have, to bodily autonomy.

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And yet, whenever I blog, talk or write on the subject of real birth freedom, women themselves come forward to say that yes, we should be free to choose our place of birth or our birth attendant…as long as that attendant is trained, or as long as the attendant is regulated.

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I think, and I hope, that if we all took a little while to really analyze what this means, we would recognize that even the slightest caveat to full birth freedom is a violation of the very concept.  When we are free to choose as long as our choices fall within the boundaries of someone else’s framework, we are still in bondage, and subjugation.  This does not only affect someone like me, who chooses to give birth at home, but all women.  All women *must* be free to truly choose *all* of the circumstances under which we give birth, including testing, interventions, time, place and caregiver, if any.  Because although birth has come to be seen as a dangerous emergency, birth is not inherently medical.  Look around us!  Birth is, if I can make an understatement, ubiquitous.  Birth is life itself.  And there is absolutely no question, I hope, about the fact that birth is extremely personal, and that the idea of safety is fluid, relative, subjective, and highly influenced by culture, values and society.

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I often hear the argument made that unless independent midwifery is replaced by a legislated, regulated model, how can we prevent someone from just calling herself a birth attendant?  How will we protect women from poorly trained care-providers?  How will we make a choice without government standards?

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The answer, is that we cannot prevent whomever from calling herself a birth attendant. We cannot protect women!  Women can, however, protect themselves, and women must take responsibility for the choices they make, including the attendants they choose as caregivers during the childbearing year.  Regulation does not preclude this, nor does regulation ensure competency in the case of midwives, or obstetricians.  Each individual mother has different requirements of a birth attendant.  One mother may be looking for a medically trained nurse-midwife.  Another mother may legitimately want someone present during her birth who has emphatically *not* been medically trained.

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For those women who desire the most highly medicalized, standardized birth experience, the hospital is available to them!  And in the hospital, most women will be assigned an obstetrician that apparently, the government or the college of physicians and surgeons, has deemed competent on their behalf.

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I talk and write a lot about my personal views regarding pregnancy, birth, and parenting.  But I am most passionate about choice.  The choice we have as individuals, and as women, to determine our lives, to live out our biology with dignity.  Freedom for birth is not a concept that occupies any particular political stance.  Freedom for birth is at the core of human rights.

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It was very inspiring to meet other women in New Brunswick who feel as strongly as I do about the importance of granting all women the right to truly choose, whether that be homebirth, unassisted birth, family birth, hospital birth, surgical birth, or birth with an unregulated, independent caregiver.

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Over the course of the afternoon, our Moncton group decided to move forward to create an as-yet informal National organization with the goal of having enshrined in the law, true freedom for birth for all women.

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We have discussed the possibility of creating a website for women to share stories of how their rights have been infringed or denied during pregnancy and birth.  And we are taking steps to get the ball rolling on the legal front.  We are also planning a public screening of the documentary film, “Freedom for Birth”, which is an excellent introduction to the many issues women face when it comes to our rights during childbirth.

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As it stands now, New Brunswick has yet to implement its Midwifery legislation, which puts us in, I believe, a very fortunate position.  There are many *fantastic* independent birth attendants working in New Brunswick right now, and increasingly, they are being hired by Nova Scotia women who are realizing that registered midwifery is definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.

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If you live in Canada and are 100% committed to true freedom for birth, drop me a line and I’ll hook you up to our Facebook group.  And if you have a story to share about your rights having been violated during pregnancy and birth, please send me an email at sasamat.clark@gmail.com.  I promise to keep all stories totally anonymous, or confidential, if this is your preference.

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And please check out the website www.oneworldbirth.net.  This site was created by the filmmakers behind “Freedom for Birth”, and is a wealth of resources, including links to a free version of the film, and more.