The Senate is currently holding an inquiry into new laws being passed that will affect the birth choices of ALL WOMEN IN AUSTRALIA.

If you are a woman or a woman gave birth to you, then please take the time to write a short email to the Senate and make your voice heard. Submissions deadline is December 11, 2009.

There are more details here with the brief from the Maternity Coalition, Australia’s National Maternity Consumer Advocacy Organisation.

Here is the submission I am sending — feel free to use it to help with ideas for your own.

Your submission can be short if you like – but please please make one – all it takes is an email and it lets the Australian Government know that you do not agree with them taking away our rights and our children’s rights.

{Date}
{Your name}
{Your address}

The Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

By E-mail: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au

Dear Sir/Madam

Re: Inquiry into Health Legislation Amendment (Midwives and Nurse Practitioners) Bill 2009 and two related Bills & Amendments

I write to express my concern about the above bills and amendments.

{Please add your own comments here – maybe about your own experiences of birth and the care of midwives – wherever your birth occurred your story is important – were you cared for by midwives or an obstetrician? What was your experience of their care? What was your experience of trying to achieve the birth you wished for in the current system? If you have not given birth yet – what are your hopes for when you do? or when those you love give birth?}

I am concerned these bills will restrict women’s right to employ the care provider of their choice to care for them during pregnancy and birth. In a country where women supposedly have won the right to reproductive health care, women are losing the right to natural childbirth without medical intervention.

All Australian women must retain the legal right to make choices about their birth and it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to ensure that the law supports them in that choice and provides unrestricted access to care providers.

Under Australia’s current system, women can choose shared care with their GP and the hospital’s midwife clinic, a birthing clinic or an obstetrician. Those women who are cared for during their pregnancy by an obstetrician only see the doctor for minutes each visit – and may not even have them present at the birth. How is this continuity of care?

The World Health Organisation recommends one-to-one midwifery care as the gold standard. This is what private practice midwives provide so why do we have to fight for this?

Why is the Government forcing women against their will into a system that has 40% operative births (instrumental – forceps or vacuum extraction and caesarean)?  We hear from midwives working in private hospitals that some of these now have 80% caesarean rates. These carry high risks for mothers and baby and affect all their future reproductive life and births.

The issue is not about midwives refusing to work with other care providers, as they are happy to be collaborative with maternity services, such as hospitals and birth centre’s, and some have excellent working relationships with individual doctors. Collaboration with other professionals is a defining part of midwifery. The problem is doctors are their competition and look at birth from a totally different perspective. If midwives have to conform to a doctor’s practice, then the doctor could tell the midwife who they see can and can’t see, for example larger women, VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Caesarean), older women, home births, vaginal breech and vaginal twins might be off limits. This might be only because the doctor is not comfortable or experienced with these kinds of births, not because of safety or the skill level of the midwife.

The Australian Medical Association has pushed for this amendment because they are a union and a union’s whole purpose is to increase the pay of its members. New Zealand’s situation, where eight out of ten women now choose a publicly funded midwife instead of an obstetrician, has scared the AMA.

With extremely high intervention rates in hospital, many women are afraid to birth in hospitals and believe their only chance at natural childbirth is at home. If it becomes impossible for registered, highly skilled midwives to care for these women, many will feel they have no option other than to birth unattended. This legislation unintentionally promotes this practice, which is directly contrary to the World Health Organisation’s objective of having a skilled attendant at every birth. I am extremely concerned that the legislation will result in unnecessary deaths of babies and mother. This is an absurd situation in a modern democracy.

In the UK, New Zealand, Canada and The Netherlands, midwives assisting at a homebirth is publicly funded and supported.

Australian women must all be entitled to the same Medicare support wherever they give birth, and midwives must all be entitled to obtain professional indemnity insurance wherever they work.

We must ensure that whatever system is put in place that it does not exclude women from accessing a home birth due to an overly risk focused exclusion criteria. If a woman wants a home birth after being fully informed of all potential risks she must have the right to have one and she must have the right to have her private practice midwife support her in that choice. They should also feel confident that if they do need to transfer during the birth that they will be welcomed by the hospital with respect, not with judgements as is often the case when a home birth has to transfer to hospital.

The latest Australia’s mother and babies report shows that, more than 97% of women in Australia give birth in the medically managed environment of a hospital. Many of them had beautiful births. Sadly so many of them did not and are still coming to terms with their experience.

More than 40% of women who gave birth in Australia had an operative birth — an instrumental delivery with forceps or vacuum extraction or caesarean section. These have considerable risks and can be very traumatic for the baby and the mother.

In Australia in 2006, there were 282,169 babies born. 708 women had homebirths. There were 2091 foetal deaths in all the births in Australia that year. No foetal deaths occurred during these 708 homebirths.

The legislation as it stands will significantly restrict women’s access to private practice midwives. These are care providers with a proven record of improving outcomes for Australia’s mothers and babies. As has consistently happened in the past, when choice becomes restricted, there are serious implications. Australia stands at risk of becoming an archaic centre for maternity health compared to other countries like the Netherlands, Canada and the UK. Decisions made by the Federal Government today will affect the birth choices available to our children tomorrow.

We as a society do not want a union (the Australian Medical Association – AMA) having the ability to decide where and with whom an Australian woman can give birth. Midwives are a highly skilled profession in their own right with a significantly different set of skills to doctors and they must be recognised as such here in Australia. The legislation before the Senate fails to do this and instead provides doctors with more control over women’s births. This, we believe, is a recipe for soaring intervention rates in the wrong direction. We must have a maternity system that supports women to choose births that minimise any unnecessary invasive risky interventions to the mother and the baby.

if these ‘reforms’ are passed Australia will LOSE ITS BEST MIDWIVES. Those who have decades of experience, those who hold the vital skills to enable normal birth. Those who practice FOR women and FOR families have the most profound impact on communities. Couples and those surrounding them are changed forever when they see babies born peacefully at home. Breastfeeding rates are the highest in the country among these women, postnatal depression the lowest. These outcomes have not be properly quantified and measured but in terms of the wellbeing of the country they are priceless. Midwives currently practicing in the community will leave midwifery and I believe many will leave the country to practice in other lands where their skills and experiences will be valued instead of maligned.

For the women of Australia, our daughters and all women who will give birth in this country in the future – I ask that you please  encourage and support a system that provides open access to safe beautiful birth experiences for those who wish to birth outside a clinical medical settings.

Yours sincerely

{Your name}

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You must include your address for the submission to be accepted – your submission will be published on the senate website, but your address will be removed.

You can ask for your submission to not be published if you prefer.

Email your submission as an attachment or just in an email to: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au – otherwise by fax (02 6277 5829) before December 11!

You can find the terms of reference for the inquiry and copies of the Bills here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/clac_ctte/health_leg_midwives_nurse_practitioners_09_nov09/index.htm

(thanks to Jennier and Katrina for ideas/words)