Basically: “We’ve progressed as a society, and we now have these wonderful tools/methods available for childbirth. It’s so much safer and better this way. Allowing homebirths would be setting women back 100 years.” That last sentence I’ve actually heard almost verbatim at a couple of the review meetings. I (and most of the people involved on our side) think pretty much the opposite. We’re talking about letting women have their own agency back, giving them the power to trust themselves and their own bodies. Most women will have hospital births, and that’s fine. But for a family that doesn’t feel comfortable or secure or whatever in that space, they should be able to choose something so basic as where they have their baby, and with whom.

There are plenty of other reasons as well. The World Health Organization recommends not just legalizing homebirth, but encouraging it—for the sake of the mother and child, but also as a means of relieving stress on the health-care industry. Free up resources for births that are not considered low-risk. Everyone acknowledges that hospitals are overburdened, and yet they keep fighting for control over our choices. Does this make sense?