Today comes news that Sheffield maternity services have been rated as inadequate. This follows on the heels of the Ockenden Report that revealed the preventable deaths of hundreds of babies, and comes nearly seven years after the Morecambe Bay Report about the preventable deaths of babies and mothers.

How did this happen? The proximate cause is the midwifery cult of normal birth wherein midwives teach each other that the process of birth is more important than the outcome.

Yet that begs the question, why did the National Health Service allow an unscientific cult to take root across its maternity services?

Because they were told it would allow them to spend less on maternity care.

As MP Alicia Kearns notes:

There is a constant expectation that women’s services and care can be done on the cheap, or that because women have given birth for generations and generations they don’t deserve the support they need.

The National Health Service made a Faustian bargain with UK midwives allowing them to do whatever they wanted so long as they promised it would cost less:

– Midwives promote themselves as less expensive than obstetricians.
– They promote normal birth as less expensive than birth with technology.
– They promote vaginal birth as less expensive than C-sections.
– They promote unmedicated birth as less expensive than epidurals.
– They promote homebirth as less expensive than hospital birth.

And they may even believe it.

But what is touted to women as an ethic of care — a midwifery philosophy that empowers women and respects their choices — is embraced by the NHS as an ethic of “efficiency” — saving money by ignoring women’s choices and depriving them of pain sparing and life saving technologies.

Thus was born the Campaign for Normal Birth, promoting a single practice performed by a normative body as objective and good … and explicitly or implicitly ignoring women’s desires for more technological approaches which are framed as both unhealthy and expensive.

There are two tragic ironies embedded in the aggressive promotion of normal birth. First, although midwives sell normal birth as less expensive and therefore more efficient, it is actually more expensive because of the massive liability costs. At this point fully 20% of the UK maternity budget is spent on paying out claims for injuries and deaths.

The other irony is even more bitter. Midwives have fallen prey to the very sins they condemned in doctors. By relentlessly promoting a one-size fits all approach to birth, they have turned birthing women into widgets on an assembly line. They justify this with an overweening paternalism that imagines that midwives know better than women themselves what is good for them.

Dead babies, grieving mothers, massive liability payments. It’s hard to view the cult of normal birth as anything other than the monstrous failure of a Faustian bargain.

UK midwifery is a cult.

Don’t believe me? Consider Caroline Flint, former President of the Royal College of Midwives, previously found guilty of serious professional misconduct.

A FORMER president of the Royal College of Midwives was found guilty of serious professional misconduct yesterday after she mishandled the delivery of a breech birth which left the baby girl dead and the mother collapsed and bleeding on the floor.

What happened?

The three-day hearing was told that when the baby’s mother, Mrs A, went into labour on 7 November 1995, Ms Flint drove her to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital where she spent three hours in a birthing pool. Although she asked Ms Flint repeatedly whether she should have a Caesarian because the baby was in the breech position she was reassured that everything was all right.

As Mrs A went into the second and third stages of labour a doctor came in but Ms Flint sent him away, saying he was not needed yet. When the delivery came it was very quick and the baby was whisked away for resuscitation.

Flint apparently learned nothing from that death. She has maintained her unswerving dedication to the cult of normal birth.

Flint is the lead signatory of an open letter from the Association of Radical Midwives (to which she’s belonged since 1976) calling for the resignation of the the current CEO and the entire board of the RCM.

Why is she calling for their resignation? NOT because of the preventable deaths of hundreds of babies on the altar of normal birth ideology as detailed in the recently released Ockenden Report. She’s calling for their resignation because they APOLOGIZED for those deaths.

The RCM has undermined and misrepresented the evidence regarding physiological birth and has allowed itself to indulge in the demonisation of the profession it was formerly presumed to represent. The failures noted by the recent reports in maternity services are complex, institutional and systemic and should not be laid upon individuals and professional groups. There is no evidence that wholesale increases in levels of medical intervention in labour and birth will reduce rates of stillbirth and intrauterine death.

The 600+ word screed is notable for the fact that it doesn’t mention either babies or safety even once.

I first wrote about Ms. Flint in 2018 in regard to her asinine comments at a midwifery festival. In a question and answer session bemoaning the low UK breastfeeding (while ignoring the fact that it has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world), Flint trumpets the radical beliefs at the heart of the cult of normal birth, claiming:

Their physiologic processes and being messed about and that’s to do with the fact that there are too many obstetricians and the fact that we are dominated by obstetric practice…

Get rid of half the obstetricians. That money could actually produce zillions of midwives and it would be safer for God’s sakes!

She continues:

Doctors are hopeless at childbirth! They are surgeons …

The from a midwife found responsible for letting a baby die because she was more concerned with promoting normal birth than with safety.

UK midwifery is a failed and deadly cult. Any solution to the epidemic of preventable neonatal deaths and injuries involves banishing cult members from the leadership of UK midwives.

Unless and until that is accomplished radical midwives like Caroline Flint will be continue to stymie safety efforts … and babies and mothers will continue to die preventable deaths.

UK midwives love to claim they are the “guardians of normal birth.”

Type “guardians of normal birth” into Google and you get page after page of midwives declaring their commitment to a specific vision of birth.

I’m not sure why they boast because it’s actually an unwitting indictment of the moral rot at the heart of UK midwifery. It’s also the root cause of yet another midwifery scandal roiling the UK, this time as a result of the Ockenden Report.

It is fundamentally unethical for any health provider to pose as a guardian of a procedure. It would be wrong for a surgeon to pose as a guardian of appendectomy; it would call into question his or her ability to successfully and ethically treat abdominal pain when he had a clear bias toward removing appendices. It doesn’t matter that the surgeon believes appendectomy is always the appropriate treatment for abdominal pain, and we would quite rightly suspect that the surgeon has his own self-interest (the surgical fee, the opportunity to hone skills, the enjoyment of performing surgery) at heart.

Similarly, if a dermatologist claimed that she was a guardian of Botox, it would call into question her ability to recommend appropriate treatment for her patients. It doesn’t matter if the dermatologist believes that every patient could benefit from an injection of Botox. We would quite rightly suspect that the dermatologist had her own self-interest (her fee, gifts from the drug company, opportunity to serve as a paid consultant for Botox)at heart.

When a midwife claims to be a guardian of normal birth, it calls into question her ability to successfully and ethically care for pregnant women. It doesn’t matter if the midwife believes that normal birth is beneficial for nearly every women. We would quite rightly suspect that she had her own self-interest (her fee, professional autonomy, the enjoyment of assisting an unmedicated vaginal delivery) at heart.

Midwives’ commitment to unmedicated vaginal birth means that complications are more likely to be ignored or denied. Treatment options are rated by whether or not they are “promote normality,” not based on their likelihood of ensuring the health of mothers and babies. A particularly distasteful consequence of privileging unmedicated vaginal birth is the failure to investigate injuries and deaths. Instead of root cause analysis, midwives “guarding” normal birth may supress investigations and ban questioning.

UK midwives need to take a long hard look at the moral rot of a philosophy that privileges birth process over healthy mothers and healthy babies. Rather than patting themselves on the back for being guardians of normal birth, they should be ashamed to be caught out promoting a philosophy that places how a baby is born on an equal or greater footing than whether that baby lives or dies.

Ideas have consequences.

Bad ideas about childbirth have deadly consequences.

If you want to understand what went wrong with UK midwifery, read what midwives have written and said:

1. Royal College of Midwives (2006):

“Louise Silverton, the RCM’s deputy general secretary, said it was the responsibility of midwives to encourage women to have a more natural birth.

“Epidurals provide effective pain relief but, where there is no clinical indication that they are necessary, they can significantly raise the likelihood of other interventions such as instrumental deliveries or Caesarean sections occurring,” she said.

“The United Kingdom already has an extremely high Caesarean rate and, as the acknowledged experts in normal pregnancy, labour and birth, we midwives need to debate ways in which we might help to bring this rate down.””

2. Royal College of Midwives 2007/2008:

“Care based on robust evidence probably has the highest profile it has ever had within midwifery. However, if policies, protocols, guidelines and pathways of care are too rigid and are unable to be applied flexibly, then there is a risk that midwives are unable to feel empowered to practice the art of midwifery. They need to use the intuition that experience and knowledge brings, to sense when a problem may or may not be occurring.”

3. Including the nonrational is sensible midwifery (2008)

“ We expose the limitations of pure rationality in the context of childbirth and use the concept of safety to exemplify the limitations that pure rationality imposes. The paper draws on philosophical and spiritual theory to present an analysis of ideas about mind, body, soul and spirit… This revised conceptualisation provides a theoretical basis that allows for and promotes more possibilities and thus more holistic ways of knowing in midwifery.”

4. Including the nonrational is sensible midwifery (2008):

“For example, when a woman and midwife have agreed to use expectant management of third stage, but bleeding begins unexpectedly, the expert midwife will respond with either or both rational and nonrational ways of thinking. Depending upon all the particularities of the situation the midwife may focus on supporting love between the woman and her baby; she may call the woman back to her body; and/or she may change to active management of third stage.”

5. Normal Childbirth: Evidence and Debate by Soo Downe (2008):

“The implication of the new subatomic physics was that certainty was replaced by probability, or the notion of tendencies rather than absolutes: ‘we can never predict an atomic event with certainty; we can only predict the likelihood of its happening’… This directly contradicts the mechanistic model we explored above, and it implies that a subject such as normal birth needs to be looked at as a whole rather than its parts…”

6. Promoting Normal Birth – Research, Reflections and Guidelines (2011)

“ You may have wondered, on first seeing this book, why the title includes the word ‘promoting.’ Why should normal birth be promoted particularly? The answer is simple. Other forms of birth — those involving plenty of interventions, especially cesareans — get plenty of promotion, simply because they may appear to be the easiest option for caregivers or the least frightening ones for pregnant women…”

7. Critical realism: an important theoretical perspective for midwifery research (2014)

“The methods utilised in these studies [of dystocia] have been randomised controlled trials … [which] promises certainty in addressing the condition, based as they are on a positivist epistemology (knowledge that is always true and generalisable) … However, the incidence of dystocia and its negative consequences for women continues to rise. If researchers had grasped the limitations of their research methods by critiquing their ontological and epistemological underpinning, they might have asked different questions about the aetiology of dystocia, researched different interventions to manage it and ultimately had a greater impact on women’s outcomes and experience.”

8. Royal College of Midwives (2015):

“This is part of the intent of the RCM Better Births Initiative, which has three themes, including: The promotion of normal births for majority of the women and normalisation for all women”

9. Cathy Warwick, Royal College of Midwives (2017):

“If women and babies are to be kept safe it is important that their birth, whether straightforward or complex, is kept as normal – or physiological or straightforward or optimal – as possible.”

10. Advocating for evidence in birth: Proving cause, effecting outcomes, and the case for ‘curers’ (2019):

“…[W]hat if evidentiary practice were expanded to include the non-rational? Stengers also has a category into which midwives who do not seek belonging via rationality might fall, a third category of ‘curers’ who ‘are not haunted by the idea of being able to disqualify others, but rather who have cultivated an “influencing practice”’ Such curers are not concerned with being rational … much less with proving (as a doctor-scientist is)…”

Over and over again the UK midwives trumpet the same extremist thinking and than are shocked to find that babies and mothers suffer the same deadly results.
It’s time to end — once and for all — midwifery allegiance to the cult of normal birth.

Transgender individuals make up less than 1% of the population but they’ve been inspiring a lot of fear and anger.

In my view that’s the result of inappropriately conflating gender and genotype.

Gender fundamentalists insist that genotype (chromosomes) and gender (identity) are ALWAYS the same. They believe that this justifies excluding both trans women and trans men from women only spaces. They adamantly oppose the inclusion of trans woman Lia Thomas from women’s sports and adamantly oppose the use of gender neutral language such as “birthing person.” They are often derided as TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists).

Gender fundamentalists are biological essentialists and they assert that respecting the gender identity of trans individuals is profoundly disrespectful of women.

Gender anarchists, on the other hand, insist that genotype is ALWAYS irrelevant; the ONLY thing that matters is gender identity. They believe that merely declaring that you are a woman is all that is necessary to merit inclusion in women only spaces. They imagine that inclusivity is the highest moral value and that the best way to adjudicate between competing desires of any two groups is to give priority to those who experience the most prejudice. They favor the replacement of “breastfeeding” with the inaccurate term “chestfeeding” and insist that “some women have penises.”

Gender anarchists ignore biology, believing that the destruction of biological categories will lead to a more enlightened future. They view anyone who opposes the destruction of biological categories as blighted by irredeemable prejudice.

Over the past year or so I’ve been trying to articulate a third, centrist view of gender and biology and the relationship between the two. The fact that I’m being pilloried by both the gender fundamentalists and the gender anarchists suggests that I am heading in the right direction.

The key tenets of gender centrism are these:

– Gender identity can differ from genotype.
– Gender identity is ALWAYS deserving of respect.
– Genotype STILL matters — and is often dispositive — when considering who should be included in women only spaces.

What does gender centrism mean in practice?

1. Individual respect – each person is entitled to the pronouns of his or her choice. When providing medical care to an individual, he or she is entitled to the use of their preferred terms, e.g. “chestfeeding.”

2. Genotypic males who have transitioned should be able to compete in sports as women, but ONLY against other genotypic men. Anything else will destroy women’s sports. Therefore Lia Thomas should never have been allowed to compete in women’s swimming.

3. Medical language should reflect genotype, NOT gender identity. There are no birthing persons; only women give birth. There are no “persons” with endometriosis; only women suffer from endometriosis.

Gender centrism is a nuanced position, especially as compared to gender fundamentalism and gender anarchism. The fear and anger swirling around issues of transgenderism are inimical to nuance. That’s why my position has angered so many on both sides of the issue. But that doesn’t make a nuanced position wrong.

Trans women are real women and trans men are real men; they merit respect. But genotypic women ALSO merit respect and that that often means genotypic-women only spaces and genotypic-women only language.

Gender identity is real but so is genotype. Gender centrism means that respecting gender identity does NOT necessitate ignoring genotype.

Earlier this month, Gill Walton, head of the Royal College of Midwives, apologized for the RCM ‘Campaign for Normal Birth’ that has harmed so many babies and mothers.

Why now, more than a decade after grieving families began complaining, billions of dollars after multiple payouts for dead and brain damaged victims, years after multiple reports put the blame squarely on the Campaign for Normal Birth?

Apparently because Walton was aware of a new report, one so damning as to be impossible to ignore. The findings of that report were just released and they are horrific, especially because the report summarizes the toll at only ONE insititution.

The title of the media report says it all:

“Shropshire maternity scandal: 300 babies died or left brain-damaged, says report. Five-year investigation to conclude mothers forced to suffer traumatic births because of targets for ‘normal’ births.”

…[A] five-year investigation will conclude next week that mothers were denied caesarean sections and forced to suffer traumatic births due to an alleged preoccupation with hitting “normal” birth targets.

The inquiry, which analysed the experiences of 1,500 families at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust between 2000 and 2019, found that at least 12 mothers died while giving birth, and some families lost more than one child in separate incidents, the newspaper reported…

The Ockenden report is expected to reveal that hundreds of babies were stillborn, died shortly after birth or were left permanently brain-damaged while many had fractured skulls or broken bones, or were left with life-changing disabilities.

The deaths and injuries were only the beginning of the suffering. According to the report’s principle author midwife Donna Ockenden:

“There have been a number of occasions where families tried to be heard over many years and were silenced or ignored.

“We have seen families that have been split apart, families where relationships have been broken, cases of trauma and PTSD that have persisted for years after the event as well as terrible, terrible sadness.

“At times, after meeting families, I went back to my hotel room and I cried.”

Why did so many mothers and babies die at just ONE institution? As the local newspaper reported back in 2011:

Caesarean section birth rates in Shropshire were the lowest in England over the past 12 months, a new NHS report revealed today.

The study for 2010/11, published by the NHS Information Centre, reveals the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is bucking the national trend with a c-section rate of just 15.3 per cent…

Health chiefs at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust put the success down to having an environment which encourages natural childbirth and using a wide range of strategies to keep caesarean deliveries low.

That “success” was actually down to letting mothers and babies die and everything that has happened since has merely confirmed that hideous reality.

So here’s what I want to know:

When will radical midwifery theorists like midwives Soo Downe and Sheena Byrom and radical natural childbirth advocates like Milli Hill apologize for the death and destruction that they promoted long after the hideous death toll became widely known?

Natural mothering is a cultural pre-occupation of both the Right and the Left.

Consider the lifestyle of fundamentalist mothers: every moment of the day consumed with child and family care. From homebirth to homeschooling, from growing her own food to baking her own bread, from extended breastfeeding to rejection of conventional medical care, women are trapped in their own homes by a never ending series of labor intensive tasks. Above all, they are indoctrinated to ignore their own needs in favor of other family members.

Consider the lifestyle of a radical natural mothering advocate: every moment of the day consumed with child and family care. From homebirth to homeschooling, from growing her own food to baking her own bread, from extended breastfeeding to rejection of conventional medical care, women are trapped in their own homes by a never ending series of labor intensive tasks. Above all, they are indoctrinated to ignore their own needs in favor of other family members.

The only difference is that natural mothering advocates on the Right believe that moral authority is vested in God, whereas natural mothering advocates on the Left believe they moral authority is vested in “Nature”.

Is natural mothering a religion that merely replaces God with Nature?

Do women surrender personal agency in the same way they do in religious fundamentalism. Rather than “Let go. Let God.”, natural mothering advocates encourage each other to “Let go. Let Nature.”

I’m not the first person to notice the remarkable similarities, both superficial and deep.

Chris Bobel, in The Paradox of Natural Mothering, notes:

… [W]omen must willingly submit to biology’s shaping of their lives… [I]ts centrality in natural mothering undermines the mother’s claim of personal agency and free will as the impetus for her lifestyle. Natural mothering, it appears, is less a lifestyle fashioned by individual women making hard choices about the best way to parent than a chosen lifestyle represented in essentialist terms.

Furthermore:

Natural mothers … may actively choose to embrace the “nature is best” ideology, but once they become attached to this ideology – buying into it completely and without regret – they surrender their capacity to make choices and in some ways become passive objects. Put differently, the ideology begins to take on hegemonic proportions and transforms women into individuals who surrender their own agency in the interest of family.

What they initially describe to themselves and others as a “choice,” comes to seem like no choice:

…[N]atural mothers claim that they could certainly choose to parent like “everyone else” (i.e., like the majority of conventional, mainstream mothers), but at the same time they speak of choice, they speak of being guided by an intuitive, body-derived source of knowledge, one that is undeniable, one that they can never dispute or reject… Natural mothering is the only real choice.

They’ve surrendered their agency to a “higher power.” Whether the women are controlled by men or religion or some conception of nature, they are still controlled.

They live their lives according to a script:

…[C]onstructing a lifestyle on the basis of a body-derived feeling that can neither be explained nor denied is the action not of an agent, but of an individual who is dutifully following a script. In this case the script was written by biologically determinist and historically gendered ideas about women, mothers, and families.

That’s not reasoning or choice; it’s religion.

Breastfeeding research is a complete and utter joke.

Why? Because breastfeeding researchers ignore their OWN findings.

Case in point: An exploration of pregnant women and mothers’ attitudes, perceptions and experiences of formula feeding and formula marketing, and the factors that influence decision-making about infant feeding in South Africa.

Breastfeeding researchers set out to show that formula marketing has a major impact on maternal feeding choice yet found that marketing had NO impact. Despite the fact that their own data did not support their hypothesis they proceeded to recommend CONTINUED restriction of formula marketing.

To my mind the worst part is not that they ignored the scientific evidence that they collected; the worst part is that they completely ignored the WOMEN they interviewed.

The authors conducted focus groups of South African women to determine why women formula feed.

Here’s what they found … and then ignored.

1. The overwhelming majority of women plan to breastfeed:

Most women planned to initiate breastfeeding, even if it was for a short period, and very few women reported that they had intended to formula feed from birth. Even in groups where mothers were selected based on formula feeding from birth, many of the mothers had planned to breastfeed but were unable to do so.

2. Women are cognizant that most healthcare professionals believe breast is best:

Women in all groups reported that they were encouraged to breastfeed by health professionals in both the private and public sector, particularly during pregnancy. Women indicated that the strong message was always ‘breast is best’ and that the benefits of breastfeeding were the primary reason for planning to breastfeed.

3. Women stop breastfeeding because it isn’t working:

Despite initially planning to breastfeed, many women made the decision to add formula or stop breastfeeding in the days, weeks and months after delivery, most often because they experienced challenges with breastfeeding…

Once breastfeeding was initiated, breastfeeding challenges continued to be the main reason for starting formula, including pain while breastfeeding, perceived insufficient milk and inadequate weight gain.

4. Women experience relief when they add or switch to formula:

It was common for women with breastfeeding challenges to report relief that when they added formula the struggles with breastfeeding were resolved. Several women described advantages of starting formula feeding as follows:

R1: You worry less.
R2: They sleep longer.
R3: My favourite one is my husband takes the night feed. I love it.

5. Formula marketing had no impact on the decision to formula feed:

Women often turned to others for advice about feeding. Family members were important in influencing women to start formula feeding, with many women reporting being put under pressure by family members, particularly their mothers and grandmothers, to add formula if the baby appeared hungry or was crying or feeding frequently.

Health practitioners were an important influence on decision making, mothers mentioned lactation specialists, clinic nurses, pharmacy workers and doctors, mainly in the private sector, had advised them to formula feed…

6. Women resent aggressive breastfeeding promotion:

Women usually perceived the method of feeding their baby as being a choice between two comparable options, and some women strongly emphasized that the feeding method should be their choice. Women complained that they were given little or no information about infant formula, and requested more information be provided, suggesting that mothers should be given more of a balanced choice.

7. Women resent restrictions on formula advertising:

A few women expressed anger on being informed that advertising is strictly regulated and formula companies are not allowed to advertise, saying that this made getting information difficult. A number of women mentioned that they felt pressured to breastfeed, and that women who formula fed were looked down on and made to feel like bad mothers.

What did the authors conclude?

Strong, coordinated efforts are required to actively counter the arguments from formula companies that portray formula feeding as a positive lifestyle choice.

The researchers ignored everything women told them in favor of their preferred narrative.

The ugly reality is this:

Breastfeeding promotion is not about babies and it’s not about mothers. It’s a war against formula companies.

Babies and mothers are merely cannon fodder. Apparently that means that their experiences, needs and desires — as well as the scientific evidence — can be ignored.

One of the worst aspects of patriarchal societies is that women are often pressured to meet male desires by being told it will “empowering” them.

We see it, for example, in the health moralism around weight: Every woman is still expected to torture her body into the male ideal of thin, lithe and cellulite free, but now it is presented as “healthier” instead of the ugly truth that it is what appeals to men.

Sound familiar? It should because it’s also the tactic behind marketing natural mothering ideology.

The natural mothering standard is a traditional male standard, tens of thousands of years old: women immured in the home restricted to fulfillment through their use of their vaginas, uteri and breasts and barred from fulfillment through their intellect, talents and character. All the while, the industries that profit from these sexist philosophies — natural childbirth, breastfeeding and attachment parenting — are promoting them as “empowering.”

Natural mothering ideology — natural childbirth, lactivism, attachment parenting — is all around us. It flows through natural childbirth and breastfeeding websites, parenting Facebook groups, Instagram photos and efforts to “normalize” unmedicated vaginal birth, exclusive breastfeeding, and baby wearing.

The patriarchal ideal of women barefoot, pregnant and in servitude to her children has been refashioned. Subjection to the patriarchy now means insisting that women are empowered by it. That way, every time someone critiques an unspoken requirement of mothers — unmedicated vaginal birth, exclusive breastfeeding, attachment parenting — you’re forced to frown upon something women have ostensibly chosen for themselves.

Simply put natural childbirth ideologues — like Ina May Gaskin, Sheena Byrom, Milli Hill, Lamaze International and Michel Odent — are agents of the patriarchy. Lactivists — like Prof. Amy Brown, Dr. Melissa Bartick, La Leche League and Dr. Jack Newman — are agents of the patriarchy.

“Celebrating” and “normalizing” natural childbirth and breastfeeding is just the up to the minute formula of age-old misogyny. It doesn’t make babies healthier, safer, smarter or better in any way. That’s because it’s not — and it never was — about babies.

It has always been about convincing women to subjugate themselves and calling it “empowerment”.

Why did UK midwives campaign for normal birth? Why did they continue to promote it despite an ever rising death toll?

The felt — and some still feel — duty bound to bring unmedicated vaginal birth to the benighted women who don’t understand its value.

They are practicing a form of medical imperialism.

The UK has a long, sordid history of imperialism, taking over and exploiting large parts of the world and leaving innocent dead in their wake. Over the centuries, the British invoked a wide variety of spurious justifications, but perhaps the most egregious was the insistence that they were doing it for the benefit of those they subjugated.

I was reminded of that justification when I read Milli Hill’s tweet in response to the Royal College of Midwives’ apology for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths of babies and mothers that resulted from their Campaign for Normal Birth.

I’ve seen concerted effort over the years to portray midwives as dangerous mavericks too and that seems unfair and possibly misogynistic. If any of them did have a so called ‘normal birth’ agenda it’s been spectacularly unsuccessful as intervention is currently through the roof.

It called to mind Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem justifying imperialism, The White Man’s Burden.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Milli Hill, like Kipling before her, believes she and her natural childbirth colleagues have been engaged in a ‘civilizing mission.’

As Wikipedia explains:

The western European colonial powers claimed that, as Christian nations, they were duty-bound to disseminate Western civilization to what Europeans perceived as the heathen and primitive cultures of the Eastern world.

Now, callously ignoring the dead babies and their traumatized families, some UK midwives and apologists — like any good imperialist — feel sorry for THEMSELVES because no one appreciates their good intentions. They believe with every fiber of their being that they know better than women themselves what type of birth is best for them.

It an ugly, self-justifying view of the way that they have exploited and harmed others — by denying women epidurals, preventing both necessary and maternal request interventions, killing babies and mothers in the process — to promote their ideology and benefit themselves.

The idea that their campaign must have been harmless because it ultimately did not succeed makes as much sense as insisting the British colonization of India must have been harmless because the Indians ultimately wrested back their independence.

Now British women are wresting back their independence. Her baby, her body, her birth, her choice!

UK midwives and their apologists must understand that it is not merely the Campaign for Normal Birth that has been a deadly failure, but the underlying ideology of medical imperialism — that midwives and natural childbirth advocates know what kind of birth is best for women — has no place in contemporary healthcare.