IMAGINE giving birth on your own, with no professional help. Imagine choosing to do that. Women do. It’s called freebirthing or DIY birth and it’s a pretty radical idea. It scares the crap out of me …

… it’s dangerous, and it could be on the rise if new legislation comes into effect.

The Federal Government has given increased rights to midwives – as long as they are “eligible” or attached to a hospital.

They will not grant indemnity insurance to private midwives attending homebirths, effectively banning them from the practice.

… there are some women who reject the idea that childbirth is a medical procedure and want to give birth at home.

They are not a bunch of … hippies … It’s … well-educated women, many of whom have had horrific births in hospitals … that they want their next one in the security of their own home.

… there is a real issue at the core.

… It is … a public health issue because these women are determined not to birth in a hospital unless it is medically necessary.

That means they have to go underground.

Some independent midwives, who will be deregistered if the laws go through, will sell their services as masseuses or photographers. They will charge a premium and they will give women what they want.

Women … will be forced to make dangerous choices. If they … run into trouble, they could be more reluctant to seek emergency help.

… In SA, there is a hospital-based homebirth program, but it is selective. Women have to meet strict criteria and … be in the right catchment area … they only do a handful of homebirths a year.

… Of 107 homebirths [in SA], three were stillbirths, two of these were unplanned and the women had had no antenatal care at all …

The Australian Doctors’ Fund has called for medical practitioners to be removed from the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Bill B), claiming the Bill is flawed.

… “Were this bill to become law, a state parliament would no longer have jurisdiction in its own state, since a “disallowed regulation” by a state parliament would still be in force until a majority of other states disallowed it” … This effectively means that the citizens of any state would be governed by other states.

“Here we have the most complex piece of health legislation ever devised, affecting over 400 000 health and allied health professionals, owned by no single jurisdiction. It is an orphan with 9 mothers, none of whom can claim any legal responsibility for their child.”

… “Yes, it is quite a complicated structure. It is sort of underpinned by the IGA… The Boards are accountable to ministers; it’s just that they are accountable to multiple ministers” …

… Despite stating that “the object of this law is to protect the public”, Bill B would set up the apparatus for the deregulation of complex medical procedures …

Fetuses that are only 30 weeks old may already possess short-term memory …

… The authors stated that habituation is a form of learning and needs an intact central nervous system.

… According to background information in the paper, the first study to look at fetal habituation took place in 1925 and involved repeated honking of a car horn. Since then, similar studies have been conducted with electric toothbrushes and door buzzers, as well as the vibroacoustic stimulator.

In this study, fetuses were exposed to the vibroacoustic stimulation at 30, 32, 34, 36 and 38 weeks’ gestation.

Fetuses as young as 30 weeks demonstrated a short-term memory of 10 minutes, and fetuses at 34 weeks seemed able to remember information they stored four weeks prior, the authors stated …