Page 986 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 1990
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Now the choices in terms of hospital births are going to be narrowed to Woden Valley and Calvary. Some people are going to find that the Calvary option is simply not available to them because of an old long-time Catholic philosophy. I asked the director of nursing at Calvary about this at an interview some months ago - it is the notion that when there is a choice between the mother and the baby, then the choice should be to save the baby.
The current response to that is almost a political answer that any of us would be proud of getting away with in the media. We say, "Yes, but we do not want it ever to come to that, and we always work to save both". Still, underlying that philosophy is a notion that you put a higher value on the value of the life of the baby than you do on the mother. That makes Calvary Hospital unacceptable to a large number of people, and quite rightly so. Therefore, they come back to a choice. If they want a hospital, they come back to a choice of Woden Valley and no other. Well, that is no choice.
Conventional hospital birthing has changed a great deal from a time when women were told to lie back and do as they were told to a situation now where women have so much more control. But it does not happen at all times. I know of a situation, just four or five years ago, where a woman requested a birthing chair or to be able to sit up for a birth, and a doctor said to her, "There is no way; I am not bending over for anybody". Granted, that was an elderly male obstetrician from Canberra. No doubt that attitude is changing. The point of the birth is that it is about the mother, and it is not about what is good for the doctors.
If that is the case, I hope there will be a great deal of consultation in terms of the new range of birthing facilities and that those consultations take place with mothers, with representatives from organisations like the Nursing Mothers Association, the birthing centre people, the physiotherapists, the midwives and others because it is the midwives that the birthing centre is about. When you read their submission - and no doubt you have done so - you will realise that part of the philosophy of birthing centres is about taking doctors out of the birthing process when the birthing process is normal and running normally and leaving that in the hands of the mothers and the midwife. That is part of this choice.
MS MAHER (11.11): First I would like to clarify a couple of points that Mr Berry raised. He has stated that I have no commitment or interest in women's affairs and he also mentioned it of the Chief Minister. Well, I find that totally untrue. I have got a women's policy here, which I have had a significant part in, that says that I do care about women and what happens to women. I have also had a lot of community consultation with different women. Over the next couple of years I will be proving that I do have an interest in women and I do have a commitment to the status of women and families in general.
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