Unsuitable Maternity Services

Chapter 2 focuses on how maternity care is provided and the implications that moving from a community-based service to an acute service has had for women and midwives. In most high-income countries, women give birth in hospitals that have a birthing suite for women in active labour and antenatal wards for women with complications arising in pregnancy. The lack of a safe environment for women (without complications) who are in the early phase of labour means that women are only admitted to hospital once labour is established (active labour). The chapter discusses how health professionals, particularly midwives, are required to act as gatekeepers; the conflict that this raises in the midwife-woman relationship; and the impact it has on women.