Page 985 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 1990
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One of the problems has been, particularly since the second world war and earlier - probably since the Victorian era - that women have tended to allow doctors, largely male doctors, to tell them how they were going to have the baby. There was a whole reversal of this role. Women are coming to realise, as part of the whole women's revolution, that this simply is not appropriate and the choices are theirs. One of the things that we are attempting to do - and I know Mr Humphries is attempting to do it, I just do not like the way he is going about it - is to increase those choices for mothers.
I am now going to go to one of the saddest things about the announcement of the closure of the Royal Canberra. As an active participant in the Nursing Mothers Association at the time I was home with my small children, I had discussions on many occasions about such things as episiotomies, and babies, chafed nipples and so on, but most often the discussion in the Nursing Mothers Association would go back to which hospital, or which style or which choice the mother would prefer, and almost always there were one or two women who chose the homebirth option. Many of the other women would argue at the time that the homebirth option was fine while everything was going okay. By and large that is the sort of argument that Mr Humphries has put up, that it may well be appropriate in the low risk situation. But, with birth, we do not always know it is going to be low risk. The problem for mothers is that they often want to remain either with their families or with their husband, or they want to stay in appropriate surrounds.
The birthing centre concept actually provides for a familiar home-style environment with a little more safety so that the risk is lower. When that is on a site that is close to a hospital, then there is a further safety factor, because if it is necessary to have a caesarian or some other form of emergency then the hospital equipment is there, and the theatre is close by. That is one of the issues that must be considered when locating the birthing centre.
Not only homebirths and birthing centres would come up in that discussion, but what also came up for the vast majority of women there, was which hospital they preferred. By and large there was a range. Some preferred Woden, some preferred Calvary, and some preferred Royal Canberra. Living in north Canberra the majority of people that I discussed this with happened to prefer Royal Canberra. Some of the reason for this no doubt was that the location was close to their homes and therefore it was a matter of preference. But, more importantly, the discussion centred around attitudes - the attitudes of the doctors and the staff - and that is what normally tended to push women towards one particular area or another.
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