No problem. Just bring those concerns forward to the College of Internet Influencers, and have their license to practice Internet Health Advice pulled.
Then go after the malpractice insurance money that the College of Internet Influencers make influencers renew every year, in order to practice internet influencing in a legal and regulated manner, to protect the public.
At least that’s how it works for actual regulated Healthcare professionals.
This is one of those situations where China has (in my opinion) nailed it. It is against the law for any influencer to post content about things like law, medicine, finance or education without having a degree in said field. Not a doctor? Stfu about free births and vaccines.
That’s actually a great idea. Why should any asshole just get to make shit up and influence people to make bad decisions?
Although those fuckers at Facebook and the like could do their jobs and actually moderate too.
According to the CDC, 1 in 5 women are mistreated during maternity care in the US. 1 in 3 if you’re Black or Hispanic. 45% of pregnant women are held back from asking questions or sharing concerns.
Birthing mothers are frequently deprived of self-agency. When a woman gives birth, everyone starts assuming they know what’s best for her without ever asking for her opinion or consent.
If you know about the husband stitch, or how women are made give birth while reclined for the doctor’s convenience, or how frequently women’s complaints of abnormal pain are dismissed, or how often women are yelled at while in labour, or they are threatened and withheld treatment, or how little their privacy is respected, you would know why women are turning to home births.
This isn’t an issue of women being silly and brainwashed on social media. Women are being actively failed by a medical system that refuses to treat them like people and not just walking uteruses.
Everyone like to talk about how stupid women are dying in childbirth to preventable causes, and yet no one wants to talk about how suicide due to post-partum depression is a leading cause of death in the perinatal period.
So before you belittle women for choosing a home birth, ask them what kind of shit they have been through at a hospital that they would rather risk death than go back there again.
Those are all very valid points. I didn’t feel the article was critiquing home births at all tho.
To me that article was about two con artists who have made $13 million + by amplifying those valid problems you shared to the point many women wouldn’t even take suffocating babies to a medical professional. There are dozens of babies who died of perfectly preventable causes but those two influencers just pocketed the money without remorse.
Absolutely wild ride of an article. Unusually long for The Guardian, but totally worth the read, regardless of your personal interest in birthing methods. Went in expecting medical woohoo beliefs, left with a better understanding of the growth and formation of radical online movements. Make sure to read to the end!
Currently anticipating the inevitable sequel once they get hit with manslaughter charges.
There have been midwives in Australia prosecuted for not transferring to hospital, and this lunatic woman in Canada who was dismissed from practice but still attends births, and recently a baby she attended died. I kind of get it in the US simply because of lack of public health care probably driving this due to cost, but in countries with public health care and so many midwife options it’s insane. I’m glad finally someone is shining a light on this, perhaps it’ll save some babies. A nurse on the medicine subreddit once said she had seen complications and deaths from home birth and freebirth that are in the triple digits.
Even when they do successfully get baby out, there’s SO much they don’t know, and when they take them to ER because baby is breathing funny (because their lungs are wet) or came out stunned or they didn’t wrap them up warmly and now they’re cold, or they turn blue because mom has untreated gestational diabetes and their sugar has crashed or whatever. It can be temporary but it’s just so not necessary.
Midwives here are licenced, I had most of my kids at home and the midwife could handle slight complications, and did. Babies die in hospital births too, I’m sure all experienced OBs have lost moms and babies, birth is not always safe. Midwives have better outcomes here but can (and are required to) turn down high risk clients so it’s not an apples to apples thing.
But they certainly aren’t like you are characterizing, they are very good specialist medical providers- is Canada so different?
ETA: with the first two we did not have insurance, midwife did a sliding scale billing according to income, with the second set I had insurance but preferred home birth. With two of them (the first and last) they would have come at home or in the car anyway, I had very short and intense labor, am close to hospitals but midwife got to me in 5 minutes, time to set up and catch the baby. With one I had to be induced so she still attended but at birth center not home.
Registered midwives here have university degrees and a professional college to answer to. The US seems to have “lay midwives” which is pretty much nothing more than a doula, and certified nurse midwives. The level of education is very different.
https://www.floridahealth.gov/licensing-and-regulation/midwifery/index.html
Not nurse midwife - those deliver in hospital here. Certified licensed midwife.
Science isn’t out to get you. Trust people who are more informed than you are (still think critically, though)
