Free Republic

The decision by the Royal College of Midwives to withdraw its decade-long campaign for “normal birth” has come much too late for my own son, Joshua, who sadly died nine days after being born, but is a welcome step. The approach for too long influenced a style of care in maternity wards that put lives at risk. These were the words spoken by Cumbria coroner Ian Smith, as he began summing up the inquest into the death of Joshua, on 6 June 2011: “With advances in medical science and techniques, childbirth has become safer and safer, to the point where...

"For those women who were not very educated with their first births, they kind of got railroaded into surgery with their first, and with their next baby, they are hitting this wall of opposition," she explains. "Unless you're highly educated and willing to take on the risk of an unassisted birth, you have no choice." After fighting with doctors and nurses to allow her third child to be born vaginally, Jenny vowed that she would never deliver in the hospital again. Her husband, Paul, wasn't against the idea of a home birth, but his wife's insistence that they do it...