NBA Press release October 13th 2004


Home birth report backs
NMH policy of forcible
hospitalisation for mothers “who do not conform”

Birth lobby groups have called upon a national health committee to resign, because of its apparent approval of a range of coercive measures to force many would-be home birth mothers into giving birth in hospital. These measures include the forced hospitalisation of women who assert their legal right to give birth at home.

The National Domiciliary Birth Group is charged with developing home birth policy in Ireland. Members of the ERHA-based Group have been mulling over national policy on home birth for almost eight years, behind closed doors. The Group has now produced a draft Report which appears to endorse forced hospitalisation as a final solution to what it calls the “dilemma” of mothers who “insist” on giving birth at home, “who do not conform to criteria”.

There has been a call for swingeing measures to police independent midwifery practice in the community. They include withholding blood testing, ultrasound scanning and home birth grants from mothers whose midwives do not sign up to terms drawn up by hospital obstetricians, many of whom currently refuse to cooperate with such midwives.

“We are deeply concerned at the draft Report’s apparent approval of forcible hospitalisation as a policy that it says is in force at Dublin’s National Maternity Hospital”, “said Philomena Canning, a midwife member of the National Birth Alliance, a lobby group that campaigns for choice in childbirth.

The group calling for the swingeing measures have a moral duty to fully set out the legal advice given to it in its final Report, the Alliance believes: “The expert advice was crystal-clear. All women are legally entitled to give birth at home, the State has a duty of care to provide them with a service, and forcible hospitalisation will not succeed before the courts”.

Sociologist Marie O’Connor, another Alliance member, pointed out that forcible hospitalisation was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is now part of Irish law: “Women have a human right to decide where and how to give birth. Mothers, like other citizens, are morally and legally entitled to decline invasive and potentially risky medical treatment, such as Caesarean section”.

“Most people would balk at the idea of handcuffing women in labour and carting them off to hospital against their wishes. But a medical member of the Group openly raised the possibility of using mental health legislation to ‘section’ home birth mothers who feel that, for them, home is the only place where they can give birth.”

According to the Alliance, key recommendations made by the Group are in breach of human rights, equality, health and competition legislation: “These recommendations will wipe out self-employed midwives and halve the number of home births”, Philomena Canning pointed out. “They represent a concerted strategy for the medical control of independent midwifery practice”.

“"Service user representatives sitting on the Group felt they were being railroaded into recommendations designed, not to increase freedom of choice for mothers in childbirth, but to bring every woman in Ireland who is having a baby under stringent medical controls," Marie O’Connor concluded. The Group's final meeting is on Tuesday 19 October at Dublin’s Ashling Hotel.

For further details, please contact:

© Marie O’Connor
National Birth Alliance

Mobile Ph: 087-231 03 96
or
Ph: 01 83 88 168,

or call:

Philomena Canning
Mobile Ph: 087-2900017

Up

If you arrive on this or any of Maternity Matters pages from a search engine please click on "HOME" to get site with full menu

© National Birth Alliance An Chomhghuallaiocht Naisiunta Breithe