It’s Still Not Settled

Last week I read some news that rattled me. 

On January 31st, 2024, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) reported: ‘Police help college investigators search home of B.C. woman with long history of illegal midwifery’. 

It rattled me because of the contradictions and assumptions inherent in this headline.

I was taught that ‘midwife’ means ‘with woman’ and I find the notion that any expression of this should be ‘illegal’ very disturbing. For centuries authorities have been attempting to control our reproductive powers under the guise of keeping us safe. 

This is no different.

This news from Canada comes straight from the battlefield of the modern day witch hunts.

Our part as women in the process of procreation is filled with tensions. On one hand it is incredibly powerful and on the other hand it makes us vulnerable. We hold the potential for new life within us and, once we have conceived, our choices have much more impact on our unborn child than those of anyone else. Because the world of pregnancy and birth involves stories of life and death, those who are ‘with woman’ and women themselves are incredibly vulnerable in the public eye.

Today's witch hunts are carried out in the press, in the court of public opinion, in actual court rooms and even on the corridors of maternity hospital wards.

Our behaviours during pregnancy are under the microscope and there is never a time when others feel entitled to an opinion about us more than in pregnancy. It is a time in our lives when we need to practice setting boundaries if we want to parent authentically. 

For some women pregnancy is a time when their intuition awakes, others want to fully rely on technology to make them feel safe. Maybe it is a mix of both.

Either choice is a reflection and expansion of who we are at the time. 

Those women who want support the old fashioned way, no scans, no interventions (unless there is a good reason for them), no probing, no testing, have a hard time in today’s society. They are judged harshly as are those who are happy to walk it with them. The harsh judgement often comes from ‘experts’ who point out the ‘dangers’ of doing it that way and they say that they need to protect women.

I wonder where this sense of entitlement comes from. Ownership of birth is a hotly contested topic and, at least in the public domain, it’s still not settled. Of course in private the answer is simple, if you are currently pregnant you own it.

That story from Canada shows how the regulators are continuing to fight for an absolute monopoly and they have the law on their side. 

Why is that?

Yesterday at breakfast with my man Gerald I was pondering whether it might have anything to do with the feeling you get when attending a birth. Particularly if you have ever been around an unmedicated birth, you’ll have felt yourself drift into this liminal space with the mother, you’ll have gone through the highs and lows of labour only to witness the bringing forth of a new life. That in itself is beyond anything we can ever fully understand but there’s more! The visceral, energetic effects on your body as a birth witness of any kind are undeniable. You get a buzz, you pick up on the oxytocin rush the mother and baby experience, it’s a vibe!

Gerald said that yes, he had always thought that women were intuitively drawn into this space because they know that it is a source of energy for them. He said that he had always observed an elation in me after a birth.

I love that man, he is full of surprises!

First time he ever told me this.

It is part of the work of all birth attendants to understand that this is not yours. You are not entitled to be there! You were not needed for this birth to happen and your being there is a privilege. This is the same for every single birth attendant: doctors, doulas, midwives, birth keepers, birth witnesses, granny, granny in law, everyone in the birth space, be grateful!

Witnessing someone’s first breath is an honour.

Even if you did truly respond to an emergency and your intervention made the difference between life and death.

It is your privilege.

Given how powerful it is to witness birth, any birth, it comes as no surprise that there is a power struggle over it. That in itself makes it political but there’s also a huge industry behind it all and that is how we find our bodies regulated in law. It is not to protect us, it is to further the self interest of politicians and those who want to hold their stake within industrial obstetrics and expand on it.

The question of legality is one to ponder, particularly after having lived through the early part of the 2020s.

What is ‘legal’ and what is ‘illegal’?

Simply put, illegal actions are actions that are ‘against the law’ and legal systems and laws are man made. 

Laws are thought up and proposed by politicians. They then go through a process specific to how laws are made in the government of the country they apply to. In the UK an idea for a new law gets proposed by an MP or a Lord in their respective houses. The idea then goes through various steps before getting passed or rejected. Laws can get passed surprisingly quickly but they can also get stalled. They are, by nature, political and the proposing, stalling and openly declaring one's intention to vote ‘for’ or ‘against’ a potential new law or an amendment to a law is one of the ways in which politicians attempt to further their political careers. 

Laws change and one law is not morally equal to another. Some laws reflect our innate sense of justice. Those laws can be found in religious scripture, too.

Some laws are universal.

Other laws are specific to a country. For instance, did you know that home birth wasn’t legal everywhere in Europe until 2010?

In this context I ask myself if it is always a disgrace to act illegally and what if someone’s moral compass guides them towards actions that are ‘illegal’?

Undoubtedly staying within the law avoids trouble but what if your helping someone give birth brought you outside of the law? 

Should you be burned at the stake?

The ‘illegal midwife’ who has had her home invaded by police and investigators from the British Columbia Nurses and Midwifery Council just days ago is one of the most iconic contributors to childbirth education in the holistic birth world. She’s a brave leader who has dedicated her life’s work in service to women and to furthering our understanding of human birth physiology. She’s a birth educator, filmmaker, wise woman, traditional birth attendant and a constant figure in childbirth education internationally.

Her name is Gloria Lemay.

Though I was shaken to read the various headlines and news stories in relation to this house search, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the news. I’ve seen this type of violation of a birth attendant on behalf of regulators and government officials before. 

I remember well the case of Agnes Geréb, an obstetrician in Hungary who was sentenced to prison and house arrest for a total of almost five years for attending homebirths which were illegal in Hungary. I became aware of Dr Geréb’s case in 2012 via a film called ‘Freedom For Birth’. It’s a documentary film about one of Agnes’ clients, a woman called Anna Ternovsky, who was supported by two human rights lawyers in ensuring that she could have a homebirth with her second baby without compromising the midwife. The case was heard in 2010 in The Hague. Anna’s lawyers argued that one’s right to respect for private and family life as well as home and correspondence, as regulated in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, captured one’s right to choose to give birth in the privacy of one’s own home. The lawyers argued that Anna should be allowed to determine the circumstances and location of her birth and they won.

The release of the film launched The Human Rights In Childbirth Movement as a global movement and I played a tiny part in it! When the film was released in 2012, I helped to organise a private screening of it in the home of one of my midwifery colleagues. We did it as a fundraiser for the campaigners.

The ruling in The Hague means that lawyers in any future cases in relation to a family’s right to determine the circumstances and location of the birth of their baby can refer to Ternovsky vs Hungary in their argument, at least within the European Union. 

Sometimes the law needs to be challenged!

There was so much reason for optimism at the time. 

Gloria Lemay, too, has spent some time in prison in the early noughties, a fact that I have seen confirmed in the various publications regarding Gloria Lemay’s repeated misdemeanours.  The Vancouver Sun reported that Gloria Lemay had spent five months in detention in 2002. She was sentenced for defying the court order to cease any activities that were considered to be ‘midwifery’ and to stop referring to herself as a midwife. It appears that Canadian law considers the terms ‘birth keeper’ or ‘traditional midwife’  to be descriptors of ‘midwifery’ (I wonder would she be allowed to call herself an 'illegal midwife').

When you show up in the world of childbirth consistently over many years, it is inevitable that at some point there will be a woman whose pregnancy does not end with a baby in arms. This can happen whether you are on a register or not, whether you are ‘trained properly’ or not. If you are keen to know how Gloria Lemay remained on the radar of the regulators in her province, you can read about the accusations and court rulings concerning Gloria’s forty years of service in last weeks’ Canadian news reels. It is noteworthy that the college offered Gloria a midwifery registration more than a decade after she had first found herself in a prominent court case that resulted in the eventual overturning of a charge of criminal negligence by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1985. Her regulated midwife colleagues must have understood the predicament that any birth attendant ultimately faces; The fact that some things are out of our control, regardless of how hard we try, and they offered her a place in their ranks. 

She turned it down, didn’t agree with some of the policies and guidelines.

Did that hurt them?

Is that why they keep coming for her?

It is difficult to understand a dynamic that has a four decade history and I won’t try. Skimming through the various articles in the Canadian press I can see the complexities and entanglements. 

The politics of ‘professional’ midwifery are complicated, there is a definite hierarchy. You can read about one of my experiences of so-called ‘professionalism’ in my post called 'The Stitch and Bitch Saga'. The world of regulated birth is not an emotionally safe place, not for women, not for midwives not for anybody.

What strikes me is the tone of the news articles and the fact that ‘the college’ over the years has employed private investigators and been ‘assisted by the police’ in searching this woman’s house.

I haven’t come across one piece that examines why someone might choose to operate outside of regulated practice, of course not.

In other news:

In my attempts to escape thinking about the bleakest realities of our time I have been binging on Netflix and before you tell me that Netflix is part of the problem, hear me out!

I discovered ‘Poldark'!

Turns out I missed it when it was a thing.

It’s got a good few things going for it:

• By the time you get to the end of Season Three (yes, I am more than halfway through and already feeling the pang of soon having to part ways with the Poldarks) you will have witnessed seven births. Though doctors are usually called, there is relatively little drama around the births and so far all of the mothers and babies have survived it (including one very pale and tiny first time mother who I personally feared would fall victim to the kind of script writing we expect around the topic of childbirth in this kind of period drama). 
• Also, there is one super defiant, red headed freebirther among those 18th century Cornish mothers. Hands down she’s my favourite character in the show, she even beats Ross’ very muscular bare upper body (on occasion we get to witness the main protagonist Ross Poldark drying off after his morning sea swim). 
• The scenery is absolutely breathtaking and reminiscent of our coastlines here on the island of Ireland.
• Story lines are engaging and the characters are strong. There are plenty of love stories, lots of passion and even some surprises.

Next time you want to escape your reality, give it a go (but only if you’ve done your yoga already). It makes for a great distraction and is beautiful to look at.

What’s been going on for you in the last week? 

What do you think about the midwifery regulator being able to burst into someone’s home like that?

Have you watched Poldark?

Why not let me know? I look forward to hearing from you at [email protected].

Of course I’ll answer any of your enquiries about the four spots that have become available on my R.O.A.D. To Birth Group via this email address, too!