Last night I was one of the many birth-loving women in the world who attended a premier screening Freedom For Birth (FFB). This was a film about human rights and the law. The creators state on their website "Freedom for Birth" is more than just a film. It marks
the beginning of a movement that will focus global attention on the
violations of women's rights during childbirth all around the world." (Emphasis original). This is a movement long overdue.
This film was quite a departure from previous birth documentaries I've seen such as Business of Being Born (BOBB), Face of Birth (FOB) and Orgasmic Birth (OB). It lacked the wonderful homebirth footage found in these films and did not delve into the personal birth stories of different families. What FFB did have in spades were law savvy women discussing human rights abuses committed against women during childbirth and midwives all round the world. In particular the film focused on the plight of Hungarian midwife Agnes Gereb who was imprisoned for attending a homebirth which a baby died at (though it was clear the Hungarian authorities had been after her simply for being a homebirth midwife before this tragedy).
One of the women who birthed with Gereb, Anna Ternovsky went to court and challenged Hungary on the homebirth situation, arguing that her rights were not respected in Hungary where her midwife could be prosecuted for attending her at home. The case went to the European Court of Human Rights and the ever-ready-to-be-disappointed-birth-activist in me was stunned to learn that the ECHR ruled that it is a human right to choose where you birth, who attends you and how you give birth. There is now an official legal document in existence in patriarchy which clearly states that women have human rights in childbirth!
Obviously the treatment of women during birth as a human rights issue is not new to those of us who have been battling against oppressive governments in the pocket of big business obstetrics, but to have this recognised by a court is a big deal. Unfortunately it means little in a practical sense in women's everyday lives presently, and even less if you're a woman without EU citizenship. But theoretically it could be appealed to, because I believe it would be a hard case for a government to make that women in Europe have human rights that women everywhere else in the world are not entitled to.
Much of the FFB content was depressing. Tales of horrendous abuse, babies taken from mothers by the state before they were born, women forcibly cut open and babies removed from their bodies against their will, and midwives threatened and punished for providing gold standard maternity care. The picture painted was exactly as Ina May Gaskin summarised in the film: a system made dangerous by a combination of fear, greed and ignorance. The filmmakers attempted to counter the woe with Ternovsky's victory, but ultimately Gereb is still under arrest, Ternovsky should not have had to fight for women's human rights in birth in the first place, and even though she had a win and this could potentially mean a lot for women in the future, at present it is (as one of the lawyers stated) "theory...an abstraction". During the discussions after the screening I attended, those present pointed out that to challenge a government legally was a costly endeavour. When thousands of women in Australia want to homebirth but can't afford to hire an independent midwife, how are we to pay the legal fees to fight the state for respect of our human rights?
But, as the filmmakers state on their website, this is more than just a film, and the end of the film is just the beginning of the movement (or more aptly the continuation of a movement that many birth activists have been fighting for many decades now!). Following the screening a friend of mine started an action group for women to brainstorm ideas of where to take the movement next in Australia.
The highlight of the film for me was Sheila Kitzinger's concluding words, which were so uplifting that I will end with them too (though much is lost without her delightful British accent and grey haired bun): "birth is not something we suffer, it is something which we actively do and exult in."
Films' website
One World Birth website
Australian Freedom For Birth Action Australia
