Copyright theage
This long-standing issue was in some cases compounded by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. At one level, the problems the pandemic created were practical: limits on the number of people who could accompany a pregnant woman to the birth in a hospital, strain on both hospital resources and the services of midwives for home births. But on another level the upheavals of the pandemic left some people, in the search for information, choosing an anti-medicine, anti-science route in the name of “natural” or “sovereign” childbirth. Some of those who operate in this space without formal medical qualifications – whether they call themselves doulas or “birthkeepers” – understand themselves as “liberating” women from the control of hospitals and what they call “medwives”, suggesting midwives are agents of the medical industry. Regulation in this space is a patchwork with worrying holes, though there are signs that this may now change. The medical practitioners’ regulatory body, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), cannot currently sanction people who are not working in one of the 16 professions under its jurisdiction. (Indeed, AHPRA sometimes seemed unable to properly regulate even midwives conducting home births, as in the case of Melbourne midwife Martina Gorner and her private service Ten Moons.) AHPRA can, and has, acted against people advertising themselves as midwives without the required qualifications. While many doulas are clear about the distinction between their role and that of doctors and midwives, South Australia has since 2014 also outlawed people who are not registered practitioners from performing 19 key birthing practices. In Western Australia, doulas are encouraged to get certification, yet the law also states that a doula may legally practise without being certified.
