If you want to see how badly the midwifery philosophy of “normal” birth has been discredited, there’s no better place to look than the UK.
For over a decade the Royal College of Midwives, the midwifery trade union, promoted a Campaign for Normal Birth on the grounds that it would save money, save lives and improve patient satisfaction. It was a spectacular failure. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of babies and mothers were injured or died preventable deaths because they were deprived of appropriate monitoring and necessary interventions. Maternity liability payments ballooned to nearly £2bn per year. As a result, the RCM was forced to shutter its Campaign.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Demonizing obstetricians by equating them with sexual predators.[/pullquote]
The RCM has yet to take responsibility for the fact that they wasted both lives and money promoting their ideological agenda. They did acknowledge that not only did they fail to improve patient satisfaction, they made women feel worse. RCM head Cathy Warwick admitted it had ‘created the wrong idea’:
‘There was a danger that if you just talk about normal births, and particularly if you call it a campaign, it … sounds as if you’re only interested in women who have a vaginal birth without intervention,’ she told The Times.
‘What we don’t want to do is in any way contribute to any sense that a woman has failed because she hasn’t had a normal birth. Unfortunately that seems to be how some women feel.’
The Campaign for Normal Birth was a spectacular failure on every level but that has not prompted much soul searching from prominent midwives. Indeed, the opposite has been happening; in their frustration they have been becoming, if possibly, more ideologically rigid.
In particular they’ve escalated their language, referring to obstetrical care in terms designed to vilify providers who disagree and incite the natural childbirth faithful. We’ve become used to their cries of “birth rape” that simultaneously demean survivors of actual rape, and maternity providers who are trying to save lives. The latest vulgarity is the attempt to equate vaginal exams with sexual assault.
According to doula Maddie McMahon:
Midwives shld be debating the pros and cons of routine VEs and exploring the evidence, or lack of, for regularly fossicking around in a normal labour. I’m just a woman telling you that you need a damn good reason to finger me. Just telling me I’m Xcm is not a good enough reason.
What is fingering?
Fingering is the use of fingers or hands to sexually stimulate the vulva, vagina or the anus. It may be done for sexual arousal or foreplay, mutual masturbation, or constitute the entire sexual encounter.
Why use vulgar sexual language to describe an obstetric exam?
1. To demonize maternity providers, particularly obstetricians, by equating them with sexual predators.
2. To discredit obstetrics as sexual predation.
3. To shock and gain attention.
4. To rile up natural childbirth advocates.
5. To vent frustration that women do not want what natural childbirth advocates believe they should want.
Why is so much rage directed toward a minor obstetric exam done to determine how labor is progressing?
Because checking cervical dilatation holds the same place in maternity care as taking a temperature does in general medical care. Just as taking a temperature allows a provider to find a fever and then address the problem, doing a vaginal exam allows a provider to diagnose a dysfunctional labor and then address the problem.
According to the paleo-fantasy of natural birth, women are “designed” to give birth, birth in nature is nearly always perfect and interventions in labor deface the pristine nature of “unhindered” birth. The facts are that women aren’t designed, birth in nature has high rates of perinatal and maternal mortality and unhindered birth is often a recipe for a painful death.
No matter! If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever. If you don’t do a vaginal exam you can’t diagnose labor dysfunction and if you don’t know about it you won’t do anything. Evidently doing nothing is the goal of UK midwifery care.
Which begs the question: if the entire point of UK midwifery care is to do nothing as often as possible, why have midwives?
They don’t lower the cost of care so they aren’t protecting NHS finances.
They don’t save more lives than obstetricians so they aren’t protecting babies’ and mothers’ lives.
And many women are extremely dissatisfied with the care they provide so they aren’t protecting women from psychological birth trauma.
What are they protecting?
They’re protecting birth! Never mind that is not a priority of women. It’s a priority of UK midwives and doulas and regrettably, they seem to think their priorities are the only ones that matter.
