Our little Fredericton Birth group had a great meeting on Wednesday night.  I was able to borrow a copy of the film “Freedom for Birth” that I referenced in a previous post, and several women showed up to watch and discuss.

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It always seems to be the case that when talking about birth and human rights, the issue of midwifery regulation is inevitable. During our meeting, there were some contrasting points of view, and it was a good opportunity for me to try to articulate how important it is to me, that women have real choice–although I always feel as though I fall short, in person, of being able to speak my vision clearly.

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One of the points that was made was that if registered midwifery was implemented in New Brunswick (the province where I live, and one of the only provinces in Canada where “official” midwifery has yet to be installed), the likelihood would be that more women on the whole, would have gentler births.

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This may be true, but when registered midwifery automatically criminalizes independent birth-workers (and it does), the outcome is that we are sacrificing the human rights of the few (those women who *want* independent care-providers rather than government-sanctioned healthcare workers) for the perceived benefit of many.

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That which constitutes a safe birth, a good birth, a healthy birth, is totally subjective, and made up of myriad factors including personal worldview, values, spiritual beliefs, society and culture. It is a violation of human rights for governments, authorities or governing associations to presume to make choices on behalf of women when it comes to birth–whether or not the regulation of birth in a midwifery context might mean that more women have homebirths, or unmedicated births, in general.

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I think it is also important to point out that in Canada, women turn to registered midwifery, not necessarily because they are interested in a completely non-medical birth, but because they want to be treated with compassion and dignity–an unlikelihood, tragically, in hospital, even today.

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Instead of focusing on how to integrate midwifery (a profession that has been successfully independent since the beginning of humanity) into a regulated system, it would make more sense to me, to create some radical changes in the hospital system, humanizing birth for both mother and baby, and implementing policies that actually reflect what the current science shows is optimal for mothers and babies.

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Regulated midwifery is midwifery in name only.  The regulated approach to midwifery hardly resembles at all, the ages-old practice of sitting with our sisters while they birth their babies.  If we really want to change what birth looks like today (and I do believe this is essential), we need to overhaul the hospital system, and we need to protect *all* women’s rights to birth in any way they choose.  I honestly don’t know how regulated midwifery (a contradiction in terms, in my view) fits in.