"But What Woman Could They Serve?" - Lisa Barrett On Eligibility

Lisa Barrett has shared an update about the eligibility criteria midwives face with the new reforms coming into force July 1st. She highlights that important questions (such as "what will so-called collaboration entail?') remain unanswered.

I believe Lisa says it best when she says:

"I’m sure there are midwives that will jump high enough to become eligible but what woman could they serve?"

These reforms really are a big step away from normal physiological childbirth options in Australia. Presently the easiest, most supportive and most certain way of achieving a vaginal birth after caesarean, a vaginal breech birth, a vaginal twin birth, an intervention free normal physiological birth etc is to stay at home in the care of an independent midwife. Women who do achieve such things in the hospital system do so against great obstacles and a lot of their birthing energy gets diverted towards fending for their rights. When being an eligible and collaborative midwife means not taking on women who fall into the aforementioned categories, what will become of those birth options and of those women? Either these women will be cajoled into submitting to unnecessary surgery (and the significant risks inherent to it) or they will be left with no other option than to go it alone or seek underground midwifery care (which puts themselves and the midwives they hire in danger in terms of State regulation and the law).

As I've been saying since talk of these reforms first began: they mark yet another nail in the coffin for normal physiological birth in Australia.