Proposed Bill Forces Women to Give Birth Alone

national | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Thursday October 14, 2010 16:26 by AIMS Ireland - The Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services Ireland (AIMS Ireland) chair at aimsireland dot com 087 754 3751

Serious Flaws in Proposed Legislation Drives Pregnant Women Underground to Birth Alone

The Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services Ireland (AIMS Ireland) release today reports from women of an underground home birth movement. The underground grassroots movement has grown from concerns that the proposed Nurses and Midwives Bill 2010 will limit women’s fundamental human right to make informed decisions in childbirth about place of birth.

The proposed new legislation, the Nurses and Midwives Bill 2010, will in effect make it illegal for a home birth midwife (SECM) to provide antenatal, intra-partum or post partum care if the pregnant woman’s circumstances do not meet criteria set in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Attending such women will be punishable by prison or fee, or both. Many of the women being excluded from home birth under the current MOU and proposed legislation are women who would have previously been able to avail of a home birth. These women are now to be excluded based on the HSE’s misinterpretation of evidence based guidelines which have been twisted to suit criteria within the MOU.

The new legislation, while appearing to only affect the small percentage of women in Ireland who choose to birth at home, will actually set the precedent in Irish legislation for all women’s rights to make informed choices in childbirth

Spokesperson for AIMS Ireland, Krysia Lynch says, “AIMS Ireland recognises and supports that midwives should be fully insured for home birth; this is best for both the mother and the midwives. The issue of concern is that SECMs can become uninsured in the middle of providing care to a pregnant woman, based on an internal HSE policy document. This MOU whilst purporting to use evidence-based guidelines, merely twists the NICE guidelines to effectively limit home birth and midwife-led services. This is the exact opposite of what they were intended to do. The NICE guidelines were never designed with the purpose of excluding women in this way. The entire ethos of NICE is to support women’s right to make informed decisions.” Lynch continues, “This is the HSE equivalent of smashing a square peg into a round hole.”

Informed choice in childbirth is a basic human right. Ireland severely lags behind its EU counterparts in the choices it offers women in pregnancy, labour, and birth.

A growing number of women are telling AIMS Ireland that they will not have their choice of place of birth compromised and that if home birth services are withdrawn, women will “go it alone” without professional care providers. AIMS Ireland understands that a group of lay midwives without medical training are now offering their services to women who find themselves in this position.

This type of underground home birth movement has already taken root in other countries and jurisdictions where home birth services and women’s choices in childbirth have become severely limited.

AIMS Ireland’s campaign to challenge the MOU and Nurses and Midwives Bill 2010 was stepped up on Monday October 11, 2010 with the release of a petition calling on the Government to hold the proposed Nurses and Midwives Bill 2010 in order to revise the MOU and terms of the State's Clinical Indemnity Scheme. AIMS Ireland and the some 600+ co-signatories thus far, believe that (i) until revisions are made to protect the fundamental rights of women to make informed decisions is respected and (ii) the MOU's criteria regarding place of birth is applied in the evidence-based best practice way outlined by NICE, the proposed legislation must not be passed.