By Dr Meredith Nash

"Because I have had one hospital and one home birth, and the home birth was much gentler, warmer, relaxed, and I had more control and far less intervention."

"I had my first baby in a hospital. While the hospital would have called it a good outcome - healthy baby - I felt quite physically and emotionally traumatised, even though I managed to have a natural birth. The hospital put pressure on me to perform (ie. dilate 1cm an hour - which I did not) and kept pushing for what turned out to be unnecessary interventions. For my second baby, I decided to have a homebirth and what a different experience that was! I had two midwives, who also cared for me throughout my pregnancy. This meant we knew each other, and they knew what I wanted. For the birth, I was able to remain at home, in my own space, and do what I felt like doing. I felt much more relaxed and confident and the birth was subsequently much less painful and physically damaging - I was able to get up and make myself some toast and load the dishwasher an hour after the birth! The whole experience was much gentler and more empowering. I would want other women to be allowed this chance."

A natural birth experience, control of the environment and management of birth, and avoidance of medical technologies have been persistent themes in current research of women's views of home birth. Whatever women’s reasons for wanting to birth at home, the right to give birth in the place of one’s choice is fundamentally a feminist issue for Australian women.

In the current system, in theory, women are ‘free to choose’ where they give birth but in practice, the realm of choice is highly circumscribed. In light of the recent maternity services review, for those women who want to make ‘alternative’ birth choices, choices are not only limited, they are beginning to disappear.

The rally in Canberra today is not just about homebirth. For those women referred to as homebirthing ‘wingnuts’, having a ‘natural’ birth at home means more than just avoiding pain killers and other forms of intervention. To give birth ‘naturally’ at home also represents women’s ability to control the decision-making and all interactions surrounding the birth process. Many women who choose to homebirth want their births to remain their decision, their achievement, and their responsibility. If exercising one’s ‘choice’ about birth in Australia means that women have to be assertive and downright demanding with health care professionals who are constantly trying to dissuade them from choosing an alternative path, the ‘choice’ becomes less about following your own intuition and more about ‘choosing’ just how far you are willing to succumb to the medical model.

Ways of combining motherhood with other feminist aspirations are rarely discussed in the current Australian political climate but become particularly visible when it comes to birth.

The issue of homebirth particularly highlights women’s fractured and partial adherence to everyday feminisms. The moral panic over homebirth may point to a ‘backlash’ against feminism(s) both by the Australian government and women themselves. In spite of hard-won changes to Australian women’s legal and political status over the last 30 years, anxieties about pregnancy and motherhood clearly continue to brew.

The rally represents the pressing concerns for all mothers (whether they plan to have a homebirth or not) given the normalised status of medicalised birth in Australia. The goal of the rally is not to suggest that homebirth is the best option for all women, but that the choice to homebirth is reasonable and understandable.

Realistically, bad things can happen to women and their babies when they give birth in a hospital and when they give birth at home.

It is ridiculous to think that homebirth will magically solve or prevent anything going horribly wrong in birth. By the same token, it cannot be denied that poor maternity outcomes are happening at a time when the majority of births occur in hospitals.  In spite of the disregard for homebirth and the nastiness directed toward women who support it, the steadily growing pattern of negative birth outcomes cannot be solely attributed to the 2 per cent of the population of Australian women who have home births.

Rather than imploring that homebirth is the ‘only’ way, we could work to improve all options of birth for women in Australia and lessen as many risks and negative outcomes as possible.  What matters for women when it comes to birth is access to the information that will enable them to participate fully in the birth experience and to make informed decisions whether it occurs at home, in hospital or in a birthing centre.

Today, we are exposing the bulk of a low-risk population of birthing women to additional risks and stresses in hospitals that they would probably not encounter in a home setting. 

It is time to actually listen to what women have to say about their bodies and their babies and their births.