"The obstetric violence will only disappear the day the police arrest the professionals who carry out this violence instead of arresting the women suffering it”. David Moreno, Midwife.
#noesno #mybirth #respeto #mipartomidecisión #violenciaobstetrica
You can sign up for the change here
And read more articles on this topic here
As a society and community, we want to legally defend human rights, the freedom of decision over our body and the autonomy of the patient (read more about the case below). We want this violation carried out by the health and legal system not to repeat itself again. We want our rights to be recognized and this case sets a precedent so that they will never be snatched again.
We are not willing to let the system keep thinking that it can make decisions for us when we are adults and with full capabilities. We want above all the good for the family that we are developing.
PRESS RELEASE
We would like to alert the international community to a gross violation of the human rights of a pregnant woman in labour in Spain.
On the 24th of April 2019, in Oviedo, Asturias, a woman who had booked an independent midwife to have a home birth, decided upon reaching 42 weeks gestation to accept the monitoring that hospitals in Spain offer women who are overdue.
The monitoring didn’t indicate any vital risk but despite this the doctor insisted on intervening.
The woman and her partner went for a walk to talk about how to proceed only to find upon return that the surgery had closed. They then decided to go home. Once at home the woman started her labour, but 24 hours later the police arrived at her house with an arrest warrant and forcibly took her to hospital with an induction order.
After some discussion the couple complied but upon arrival at hospital were then left for over an hour in A&E which contradicts the emergency implied by the arrest.
After this the woman was taken to the antenatal ward where she continued labouring naturally. The day after a cesarean was performed due to “lack of progress”, which to those of us working in childbirth is almost certainly the result of the incredible stress this woman was subjected to.
We are absolutely outraged at the disrespectful manner in which this woman, her family and her baby were treated.
We were shocked to learn that an institution in Spain could order the arrest of a woman in labour and have a legal representative execute it.
Out of this outrage we have created an international platform and started a movement with the hashtag #miparto/ #mybirth to support this woman in a country where the choice of home birth is still not socially accepted nor covered by the Public Health Service and most media have portrayed the authorities approach as the right one with total disregard to the rights of the woman.
We are birth professionals and non professionals who believe that violating this woman’s rights is violating all women’s rights.
Some of us worked on the case of the forced cesarean of a woman in Brasil in 2014 and cannot believe or accept that forced procedures in birth are still happening.
We feel very strongly that the human rights of women must be clearly and unambiguously understood and we demand justice for this woman while campaigning for all women around the world.
Spanish contact: parirenlibertadspain@gmail.com
International contact: jesusaricoy@gmail.com/ daraluzasturias@gmail.com
The objective of this crowdfunding is the legal defence and social action that this case needs, to defend the rights of this specific case, to defend the rights of all pregnant women. We are doing diffusion and awareness through the Facebook page, Plataforma Mi parto / My birth and from the page and the Youtube channel of Dar a luz en casa, here and here
This action is extremely important for defending the human rights of people, and in particular of women. We are still treated from paternalism and the false belief that the state and/or health services know better than we do what is the best option for us and our babies. The laws are there, they are on our side, and yet, the people who are supposed to respect them, use them to force us to interventions with which we do not agree.
This has to change.
This is the team that is part of a group of people who have felt our dignity as a person offended. We are health professionals, mothers, professionals of all types, women, men ... that we join together so that justice defends who really needs to be defended.