Your Body, Your Birth, Your Choice

Do you watch One Born Every Minute or Call The Midwife? ITV are showing Home Delivery at 9 o'clock tonight, a documentary following an independent midwife in Kent.

You may not know that this October the government is bringing in legislative changes that are going to prevent independent midwives from practising, meaning that childbirth will be one of the few areas of healthcare where you will have no choices. Independent midwives have a huge amount of knowledge around childbirth that our NHS maternity units are generally lacking, and this knowledge and experience will be lost to us.

Independent Midwifery is widely recognised as the gold standard against which the NHS cannot compete (no doubt because of cost and staffing levels). The solution should not be to remove that gold standard so what remains becomes the norm.

There are a number of ways you can show your support:

Sign this petition urging the government to find a workable and affordable way for independent midwives to obtain the compulsary insurance and continue to practise

Join midwives, mums and other supporters in a peaceful protest in London on Monday 25th March, details on the Facebook ChooseYourMidwife page.

Most importantly, spread the word. Don't let our choices be quietly taken away from us.