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Regulated midwifery has been legislated in the province of New Brunswick for a couple of years, but implementation is now imminent, with the recent announcement of the funding of a pilot project which will involve hiring four regulated midwives.

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Midwifery regulation is terrible for regulated midwives, and it’s terrible for women, and we can see the evidence of this all over the world. Under regulation, everyone’s “options” become narrower and narrower, and everyone involved is owned.

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The big lie is that regulation improves “access”.  Those of us who have seen it in action know that the result is the opposite.  Because of the rigid structure of a regulated midwife’s “scope of practice”, history tells us that only the healthiest, most privileged, urban, educated women end up with home births under regulation–not the fat women, or the poor women, or the GBS-positive women, or the women who give birth at 43 weeks’ gestation, or the women who have had previous c-sections.

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I understand perfectly well that there are “provisions” in every midwifery act,  allowing for women’s “choices”.   Lip-service is made to the concept of “informed consent” throughout the medical industry.  In practice however, we know this is specious and laughable.  “Choice”–real choice– doesn’t happen in hospitals, and it often doesn’t happen under the care of regulated midwives.  Women continue to be pressured and coerced into making choices that they wouldn’t otherwise make.  The difference is that under regulated midwifery, that coercion may take place much more nicely, sweetly, and indirectly, but it happens, and it happens because regulated midwives’ hands are tied by the strictures of the the rules under which they are governed–and because regulated midwives are trained in a medicalized paradigm.  Often midwives themselves are unfamiliar with truly physiological, spontaneous birth.

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I receive messages every week from women all over the country (in provinces in which regulation has been implemented), who tell me stories about being informed by their registered midwife when they are 42 weeks pregnant, that their midwife will no longer be permitted to attend their birth at home.  Or women who were in the birth process for 20 hours, and whose midwife then informed them that they had reached the cut-off point, and that they would have to be transferred–according to the midwifery stipulations–to the hospital.

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I have known that the implementation of the NB Midwifery Act was in the works for quite some time now, and I have never had any illusions about it.  But what does admittedly bother me, is the scores of women–many of whom I know personally, many of whom have come to the free meetings that New Brunswick independent birth attendance have offered in order to share information and knowledge on birth, many of whom have called the independent birth attendants of New Brunswick on the phone for advice, or who have emailed the independent birth attendants of New Brunswick and received detailed responses, many of whom have expected, and received, the time and energy of New Brunswick independent birth attendants, some of whom have even hired independent birth attendants to witness their (wonderful) births, and some of whom have witnessed the births of others alongside New Brunswick independent birth attendants–who are cheering the arrival of funding as though it is only at this moment, thanks to the benevolence of government, that home birth is suddenly, magically available to women. Most of these women know full well that their support of regulation is a direct vote to throw under the bus the independent birth attendants who have been working in this province for years.  Several of these independent birth attendants have many many years of experience and expertise in spontaneous, autonomous, physiological birth.

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Regulation is about medicalizing birth, in its entirety.  Appropriating the term “midwifery”, is a brilliant maneuver; a genius way to stamp out female reproductive autonomy entirely, in the most fundamental way, and to colonize women’s bodies completely, with as little resistance as possible. “Midwifery” used to mean a woman who supported other women during the normal biological process of birth.  The word now refers to a medical professional, trained in an academic setting, by obstetricians and nurses, in the “management” of “low-risk” birth.

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Among other things (power, control) this is an issue to do with money. The party that signs the cheques holds the power.  Under regulation, this would be the government.  The best decision of my own life was to go into personal debt in order to pay my traditional birth attendant several thousand dollars, after I fired my regulated midwife during my first pregnancy.  During my birth what she did was to sit there, and say some words to me.  It was the best money I have ever spent.

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I don’t give a darn what the government does, or how they want to configure the delivery of their medicine.  But I do have a huge problem with the criminalization, either directly or indirectly, of women’s reproductive autonomy.

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Following are just a few recent testimonies from (mostly) New Brunswick women, who were once in support of midwifery regulation.

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