Mothers and babies in danger – Midwifery must curb its radical ideologues
by Niall McCrae, Rebel Priest blog:
Stillbirths. Tiny tots who lose their mortal coil. Mothers who succumb to physiological trauma. A hundred years ago these were common outcomes of pregnancy, but now are thankfully rare. So when a spate of tragic deaths occurred at the maternity unit of Furness General Hospital in Morecambe, an enquiry was eventually held. Unlike previous NHS scandals, the Morecambe debacle was not simply a result of staff negligence and poor management. Babies died due to a dangerous dogmatism.
I am emphatically not criticising the whole corpus of midwifery. My sister is a highly experienced midwife at a prestigious London hospital, where she has dealt with the most complicated of births. In my family we have had marvellous midwives facilitating two home births, giving excellent care to my wife and newborns.
But something has gone wrong with this noble profession. Midwifery has become immersed in an ideological agenda. As in other vocations such as the police, this is not the fault of ordinary practitioners, but the leaders. The march through the institutions has succeeded by stealth, as those who spout the favoured political orthodoxy are promoted, and then impose themselves through policy. In midwifery, the theme is radical feminism; the enemy is the patriarchy.
[…] The dogmatic movement is personified by Cathy Warwick, until recently chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM). Warwick certainly made a name for herself in leading an organisation representing 46,000 midwives. Without consultation, or a vote by the board, she announced policy to support decriminalising abortion. In collaboration with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the prolific abortion provider, Warwick pledged the RCM to the ‘We Trust Women’ campaign.
It soon transpired what was meant by decriminalisation, and many midwives were horrified. A fully-formed baby could be terminated right up to the due date, without sanction. Warwick justified this by defining the RCM as ‘being for women, and respecting their choices regarding their bodies’. The other human body was conveniently ignored. Indeed, Warwick envisaged midwife-led services that encompassed babies being born or extinguished depending on the woman’s preference.
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