Women feel put under pressure to have medical procedures such as caesareans during their maternity care, according to a report.
The charity Birthrights collated the experiences of 300 people in England who said they had felt or witnessed coercion within a maternity setting.
It said caregivers used authoritative language that undermined the idea of women being able to make informed decisions regarding their maternity care.
Difficult to understand here.
Hazel Williams, the chief executive of Birthrights, said: “This crucial report documents the rise in coercive practices as a systemic problem across the maternity system, with Black and Brown women and birthing people facing the worst attacks on their human rights, choice and bodily autonomy.
“Women and birthing people are repeatedly being told you are ‘not allowed’ or threatened with children’s services referrals, not given full facts and denied genuine informed choice. Coercion has no place in safe maternity care and must stop now.”
Or is this in fact the madwives themselves complaining about technological intervention? For anyone who goes around saying “birthing people” is, obviously, mad.
Isn’t maternity services in most hospitals run by ethics themselves?. And are we now expected to capitalise the ‘b’ for brown too?
Fortunately not round here, at least judging from the experience of my DiL who gave birth in Dorchester hospital last week is anything to go by.
As I’ve noted before, we seem to have a different NHS round here, one that is reasonably competent when compared to more progressive parts of the country.
BiND, she was lucky it came in March.
It may be different now, but twenty years ago Dorchester did indeed have an excellent reputation (even amongst the medical profession) for childbirth, because of a superb (and rather old-school) consultant who was in charge of it all.
That was great, except every January when he went skiing and the whole department seemed to fall apart without him (perhaps he was too controlling when he was there).
Both of mine had been due in February, both were a month premature, so we saw a shocking catalogue of cockups.
Yes, Julia, i’ve been surprised by the all the claims of racism, misogyny and of women in particular not being listened to in matters of healthcare, simply because it appears that the majority of people doing all the healthcare are brown and or women……
it appears that the majority of people doing all the healthcare are brown and or women
But plainly not birthing persons.
Childbirth is a very dangerous time for the mother and baby. There is a lot that can go wrong. Where things have gone wrong the lawyers get involved and their easy question is “if the doctor performed a C-section could the outcome for the baby have been less damaging?”. If the answer is “yes”, and it often is, they can play the malpractice card. It can go the other way too and a women sues for complications after an “unnecessary” C-section but these are invariably less profound hence less expensive. Whichever way it goes the lawyers win.
Whilst not the only cause of increasing use of the procedure, legal defense is certainly one.
When I try to give posts a thumbs up I get a red flag saying “You cannot vote for your comment”. But it’s not MY comment!
I’ve been getting that too…
Yup, me too.
Anyone using the phrase “birthing people” in cold blood should be ignored.
Anyone who capitalises black or brown must be ignored. Same with (as Marius points out) anyone using ‘birthing people’. How they got women to erase themselves is hard to understand – but then they’re also getting white people to erase themselves.
You can get a sense of this mentally-captured imbecile’s brainpower by this paragraph:
COERCION MUST STOP!
I wonder where she was on covid jabs for nurses.
Not a joke, Jack – people like this are destroying our country. Her previous working history includes working for
Had to Google “Doula”. Ancient word which means”female slave” (I bet those who refer to themselves as a doula aren’t aware of that little factoid) but came to prominence in the natural birth movement in 1960’s America. Something else to blame on the fucking hippies then…..
These days we aren’t supposed to refer to master/slave in computing or engineering anymore to refer to one device driving or controlling another. Funny how “doula” survives unscathed and its use is promulgated by “progressive” people.
Ah, but it’s not an English word, so it’s sexy and exotic.
Other examples: weeaboos having “This side up” in kanji as a tattoo “because it looks cool”, Japanese wearing a t-shirt with “Angry Fruit” as a logo for the same reason.
I suppose the term “gender bender” used in the ‘80s and ‘90s as standards for data cabling were being implemented would be frowned upon nowadays.
Don’t we already have a word for person who assists during birth? Midwife.
I think midwives are more regarded as birthing assistants rather than as birthing people/persons, the definition of whom is a biological conundrum.
Somewhere, there must be an off-switch for funding this shit.
Blair and his fucking third sector. You’ve got to hand it to him, he was brilliant in so many ways and this was one of them: he got the productive class to fund its own obliteration.
There’s an art to that type of evil – while Brown probably did as much damage he didn’t have the flair that Blair did. Of course both need to be tried for treason post haste.
The off-switch is to outlaw all forms of state funding to the 3rd sector. Government is government; charity is charity, voluntarily funded by donations from the general public, just as it was pre-Blair. [Actually, pre-Major].
No more government (and government policy) hiding behind allegedly arms-length bodies. No revolving door between government and 3rd sector: a statutory break period of several years between leaving one and entering the other, just like a non-compete clause. Oh, and a limit on how many different jobs a quangocrat can have in its career, pending reabsorption of all quangos into government.
That’s a very short Bill indeed, isn’t it, Nigel?
Does it even need a bill? Just get the ministers to stop doing it.
The 3rd sector will kick up a stink, but you have to power through it.
“The off-switch is to outlaw all forms of state funding to the 3rd sector. Government is government; charity is charity, voluntarily funded by donations from the general public, just as it was pre-Blair. [Actually, pre-Major].”
It also needs the ban on charities campaigning reintroduced. As was also relaxed by Blair. Charities need to return to spending money on actual dogoodery. Not lobbying government, trying ‘raise awareness’ etc etc. Ban all that sh*t and the whole sector would reduce in size by half. The middle classes don’t want to get their hands dirty looking after the poor, the sick, the downtrodden. They just want to have nice middle class 9-5 office jobs, where very little actual work is required.
She’s probably as damaging to the country as an ISIS headhacker for sure.
Um, I thought the coercion in maternity healthcare was against caesareans? The midwives are all ‘natural childbirth’ fanatics aren’t they? Suggesting that mothers-to-be are being ‘pressured’ to have caesareans seems a bit of typical Leftist projection. The more normal tale one hears is a pregnant woman demanding drugs and operations and being refused by the NHS.
Jim, my experience was that it’s a fight* between the midwives (who, as you say, want a ‘natural birth’) and the doctors, who will grab the scalpel and cut the baby out on the slightest excuse.
*’fight’ isn’t just metaphorical, it actually got physical over one of my sprogs. The doctor was pushing the bed out with my wife on it, to take her down for a caesarean, while the midwife was kneeling in front of it, blocking the way out of the ward and claiming that she could “see its head”. Nurse and doctor were both women.
BiND, I don’t want to worry you, but that was Dorchester.
It doesn’t worry me 🙂
DiL had a great experience all the way through and had no qualms at all about the mid wives or doctors she met. They gave her drugs when she asked without question and when there was a slight problem with the birth she said everyone was so calm, sorted it out and disappeared.
As you said above, it depends on the leadership.
And her experience matches my own when I was being diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. The only problem I experienced was when I had complications a week after the biopsy and spent a couple nights on a medical ward with staff shortage.
Pleased to hear it. Mine were twenty years ago; the man who ran it then is probably enjoying his NHS pension now.
And I thoroughly recommend their plasterer should you ever break anything; a true craftsman.
So birthing people deserve to be told the facts, eh? Such as they fact that they are actually women?
My late mother would have been wildly offended to be called a birthing person. Being a mother was her whole life.
‘Hazel Williams, the chief executive of Birthrights, said: “This crucial report documents the rise in coercive practices as a systemic problem across the maternity system, with Black and Brown women and birthing people facing the worst attacks on their human rights, choice and bodily autonomy.’
From the ‘Birthrights’ website:
Birthrights was founded in 2013 by human rights barrister, Elizabeth Prochaska
An example of their campaigns
‘One year on from the UK’s racist riots: calling for answers and systemic change’
Assuming there’s no appetite from Reform for everyone involved with the organization to be arrest and tried for high treason, at the very least, absolutely zero taxpayer’s money should go anywhere near this place and any donors to such an organization should not be able to claim any favourable financial consideration.
Quite why we don’t just abolish all such organizations is a mystery,
The NHS is “systematically racist”,
But it’s so important to give them the legal right to commit homicides against their patients.
Gamecock’s GP retired. On attempting to make an appointment with a new doctor, the choices were ALL female.
Gamecock suspects that the perpetrators of women’s – and birthing people – human rights abuses are in fact also women.
“threatened with children’s services referrals”
Interesting to see someone who seems painfully right-on and left-wing complaining about that, when the rest of us usually see it as one of the weapons that her lot use.