The Free Birth Society (FBS) is a multimillion-dollar business that promotes an extreme version of free birth, meaning women giving birth without medical assistance.
The Guardian can now reveal that the organisation has been linked to dozens of cases of maternal harm and baby deaths around the world.
After a year-long investigation, Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne explain why some women they interviewed found FBS’s views so appealing, and why medical professionals say their claims about birth are dangerous
What I don’t understand is, we have doctors who specialize in helping give birth, they have teams, wings in hospitals are set up just for that. Why not take advantage of the help? Why put your body-- and the childs-- thru unnecessary complications?
(Ofc this opinion doesn’t include third world countries like the US that don’t have access to this sort of thing. Without risking bankruptcy.)
They literally believe that those things are part of a conspiracy to make and/or keep us sick for profit.
The arguments in favor of this take real examples of shady shit companies have done in the past and mix them with a healthy dose of the appeal to nature fallacy. It can sometimes be dressed up in scientific terms to make it seem more legitimate; e.g. Your body evolved to do this, so it’s better to do it naturally. Or it can be a matter of faith.
Of course, they downplay the mountain of evidence regarding infant and maternal mortality that we’ve accumulated over the last couple of centuries.
It’s a scam, and one that unfortunately will get a lot of innocent and well meaning mother’s and their children killed.
Many Free-Birth propaganda pieces promise that they will make birth “orgasmic”. In their view, medical childbirth is painful because the doctors are doing it wrong. Some fear that medical intervention may hurt the baby. That point is more popular among husbands and in-law grandparents who don’t care about the health of the woman.
This isn’t to downplay how painful standard childbirth can be. I fully understand that it is extremely painful to push a 8-10 pound baby out of your body.
