Homebirth Illegal ...

Hamish and I one minute after birth .. at home .. those extra hands are my midwives.

Today two Bills were introduced to parliament by health minister Nicola Roxon.

1) Health legislation amendment (midwife and nurse practitioner) Bill
2009

This Bill is about accessing Medicare and PBS, there is nothing currently
written in this Bill that discuses eligibility - there is no comment within
it at present that states anything about homebirth. However, in her speech
she openly stated that there will be no MBS for Homebirth.

2) (and this is the clincher) Midwife Professional Indemnity
(commonwealth contribution scheme) Bill 2009

This Bill excludes midwives from providing intrapartum homebirth care.

The outcome is that homebirth midwives will be breaking the law as of July 2010 if they attend homebirths because there is no one currently offering indemnity insurance for midwifes. Hospital based midwives will be able to access the hospitals insurance but will not be covered for births outside of hospital unless those births are part of a hospital run homebirth programs of which there is only one in NSW and it covers a very small radius.

Homebirth and women's choice advocates see this as an issue of choices. Homebirth is safe, there have been many studies whose outcome proved that homebirth was safe, the most resent was the Netherlands Study released last month. It took 50,000+ women who had homebirths V 50,000+ who has low risk hospital births, the data showed that there was no difference to the safety of mother or baby if the chose to birth at home. You may say that you would not choose homebirth and that is well within your right, the point is it should be within my rights to choose to birth my babies at home with a midwife attending.

Birth without midwives is called freebirth, there is no data on the safety of freebirth, and for a lot of women it is not what they would choose. There are more and more cases of women who do choose freebirth being visited by the Department of Children's Services (DOCS) for endangering their child, women have actually had their children taken from them, and although all so far have been reunited it speaks strongly of the government departments policy on freebirth and the danger that women are facing if they choose to do so.

Personally I am speechless, and so very sad. I would encourage everyone to look into this further, write letters, attend rallies, join your local homebirth organisation and FIGHT !! fight for your choice to choose however you want to birth, fight against laws being made that discriminate against a small minority, good lord, please just help us fight !!!