Irene Behrmann, Chair of GreenBirth e.V.

 

Dear Mr. Brian Cowen,

My information is: The Irish have been working their socks off and on the 4th, November their parliament is going to consider the bill to outlaw home birth.

I want to ask you and your parliament, if your information about giving birth covers all the aspects necessary to take a decision of that importance.

The birthing process is a natural process an not an medical event. If a woman is ill, it is good for mother and child to have medical help. but to abolish homebirth is an attack against healthy mothers and chirldren at the most vulnerable moment of life.

No parliament has the right to establish deliberately risks for the newborn baby and its mother with all the known longtime effects.

Caesarean section is dangerous - to give drugs against pain implies risks for the health of the baby and the mother. The more births take place in hospital, the more caesarean sections will be performed. Children born with shock and anaesthesia at the beginning of their lives bear risks which may only show in later life. Please read the scientific studies to this regard.

The nature of mankind has developed in thousands of years. Most of the time, there where grandmothers and midwives who attended the process of birth which is navigates by natural hormones.

Where is the advantage for this adventure? Please take your calculator.

In Germay a homebirth attended by independant midwives costs 500,- €. Afterwards there are hardly any costs other than the daily visits by a midwife.

A delivery in a clinic costs about 1500,- plus 1200,- € for the baby. There are more risks, more damages done to mother and child, wich will lead to further treatments, often long lasting.

One caesarean section costs in Germany at least 4000,- €. Secundary complications again for mother and child on the physical as well as psychic level with their expensive treatments are never mentioned in the overal costs.

Who are your advisers? Please, ask the morthers who know both, a birth at home and a birth in hosipital. Listen, please, to what women tell you about birth. Men never can feel what women do. Men have to respect what women say to this question. That cannot be a decision of predominant menfolk in parliment.

Women, who have little children at home, can’t always go to town to see a doctor. They have to be home with their small children and need protection from society. And regular visits from their midwives!

With kind regards
Irene Behrmann

If you will sign the petition, please take the text into your mail and send it directly to the namend persons below.

Thank you.

Sign the petition (and let the Irish know that you have done so, and which organisation you are involved with by emailing Jene Kelly

Write to the Prime Minister Brian Cowen,
Taoiseach: taoiseach@taoiseach.gov.ie or press.office@taoiseach.gov.ie.

Minister for Health Mary Harney

Green Party Leader John Gormley