text: 1 Comment	/ birth plan, choices, informed decisions, This is Me / By Catherine The Birth Cartographer
  July 19th 2019 8pm AEST (a recording will be available afterwards in the free member area)
  The Trouble with Consent in Childbirth
  and How to Fix it
  Our insurance driven, medicalised maternity system is giving lip service to women’s rights in the form of ‘informed consent’. The trouble with this is that women are rarely informed and the premise of consent is to comply. Consent is about freeing someone of liability and asking for consent assumes, and implies, that the best action is to say yes.
  Many women refer to their birth as a rape. They felt violated at their most vulnerable time, by people who they trusted and who held a position of authority. This keenly felt power imbalance meant they were unable to not consent. Other women experience trauma that is dismissed because ‘they have a healthy baby’.
  The maternity system is dismissing women, to the point of near erasure. It is up to women to reclaim, and demand, their visibility.
  But How?
  Instead of ‘informed consent’, we give women the tools they need to focus on Decision Making.
  This very simple shift has the potential to significantly reduce the need for intervention and decrease the risks of birth trauma and post natal depression. This very simple shift rebalances the power between women and care providers.