Should pregnant women be encouraged to shun hospital labour wards? | Milli Hill, Ellie Gibson, Joseph Harker

Nice guidelines now suggest that 45% of births are more suitable for midwife-led care. Our writers discuss their experiences

Choices cannot be fully free if they are rooted in fear, not fact. Nowhere is this illustrated more vividly than in the 21st-century birth room. Here is a place where the power dynamic is weighted heavily in favour of the experts, where information is not always given in an unbiased way and where fully grown women still talk in terms of what they are “allowed” or “not allowed” to do.

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1zjIoiP