The role that loss of control plays in traumatising tens of thousands of Australian women each year during childbirth will be probed in an inquiry.
Doctors, midwives and mothers’ advocates will address a New South Wales (NSW) parliamentary committee on Monday, highlighting women’s experiences of birth trauma.
Researchers have suggested one in 10 women feel they may have suffered so-called “obstetric violence,” a term the peak body for practitioners opposes on the grounds it wrongly implies intent to harm.
Instrumental or surgical intervention is now used in about half of the 300,000 births that occur in Australia each year.
But a significant number of women do not give informed consent for those interventions and are having their choices disregarded, leading to trauma, Human Rights in Childbirth chair Bashi Kumar Hazard will tell state MPs.
“It’s a loss of control that the women really struggle with,” the Sydney lawyer told AAP.
Ms. Kumar Hazard said hospitals and health providers were aware of consent issues but lacked the incentives to change.
She suggested using small fines to curb and monitor minor infractions by practitioners and hospitals and opening up the path for women more seriously harmed to take legal action.
“(Providers) had plenty of warning, and they could have dealt with it differently, but they chose not to,” she said.
The lawyer, who began working in the field of birth trauma more than a decade ago after giving birth for the third time, wants broad change and an elevation of the “gold standard” in care, midwife group practice.
The service is highly regarded, but workforce shortages have hampered expansions, NSW Health says.
The inquiry has been inundated with thousands of submissions from across the country, including from doctors and midwives.
“The amount of coercion I have seen in my very short time in this career is horrifying,” said one midwife with experience in two of the state’s top-tier maternity hospitals.
“(Many women) are still severely affected by fear, depression and anxiety years after the event,” a Lismore obstetrician said.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has also acknowledged consent as the bedrock for improving women’s birthing experiences.
It has called for earlier and high-quality discussions with patients about all possible outcomes, not just ideal or normal births.
The inquiry is expected to run for several months.
