This book investigates why women choose 'birth outside the system' and makes connections between women's right to choose where they birth and violations of human rights within maternity care systems.
Choosing to birth at home can force women out of mainstream maternity care, despite research supporting the safety of this option for low-risk women attended by midwives. When homebirth is not supported as a birthplace option, women will defy mainstream medical advice, and if a midwife is not available, choose either an unregulated careprovider or birth without assistance. This book examines the circumstances and drivers behind why women nevertheless choose homebirth by bringing legal and ethical perspectives together with the latest research on high-risk homebirth (breech and twin births), freebirth, birth with unregulated careproviders and the oppression of midwives who support unorthodox choices. Stories from women who have pursued alternatives in Australia, Europe, Russia, the UK, the US, Canada, the Middle East and India are woven through the research.
Insight and practical strategies are shared by doctors, midwives, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists on how to manage the tension between professional obligations and women's right to bodily autonomy. This book, the first of its kind, is an important contribution to considerations of place of birth and human rights in childbirth.
Part 1: Understanding the Problem 1. Freebirth in the United States 2. Giving Birth Outside the System in Australia: Freebirth and High-Risk Homebirth 3. Understanding Women's Motivations to, and Experiences of, Freebirthing in the UK 4. Birthing 'Outside the System' in the Netherlands 5. The Rise of the Unregulated Birth Worker in Australia: The Canary Flees the Coal Mine 6. Identifying the Poisonous Gases Seeping into the Coal Mine: What Women Seek to Avoid in Choosing to Give Birth at Home 7. The Journey of Homebirth after Caesarean (HBAC): Fighting the System or Birthing in Peace 8. Seeking Control over Birth in the Middle East 9. Why South Asian Women Make Extreme Choices in Childbirth 10. Birth Choices in Eastern Europe and Russia 11. The Modern-Day Witch Hunt 12. Birth Trauma: The Noxious By-Product of a Failing System Part 2: Working Towards a Solution 13. What are Women's Legal Rights When it Comes to Choice in Pregnancy and Childbirth? 14. The Role of the Coroner in Australia: Listen to the Canary or Ignore it? 15. Keeping the Canary Singing: Maternity Care Plans and Respectful Homebirth Transfer 16. Why Aboriginal Women Want to Avoid the Biomedical System: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Stories 17. Midwifing Women Who Make 'Off-Menu' Choices 18. Anthropologist, Midwife, Researcher: a Perspective on Birth Outside the System 19. A Conversation with the 'Breech Whisperer' 20. Obstetricians Discuss the Coal Mine and the Canary 21. Conclusion: Keeping the Canary Singing into the Future
