Press release — AFAR (2003)

We approve the pub­li­ca­tion of this press release pro­vid­ed that it has not been altered. Please noti­fy us about it.
PRESS RELEASE
Alliance Fran­coph­o­ne pour l’Ac­couche­ment Respec­té (AFAR) <https://afar.info> is a French-Lan­guage net­work of cit­i­zens and non-prof­it soci­eties involved in the sup­port of, and infor­ma­tion about, gen­tle child­birth and care of the new­born. The soci­ety has been reg­is­tered in May 2003. AFAR does not advo­cate spe­cif­ic choic­es with respect to places of birth and its atten­dants, and it is free from any philo­soph­i­cal, reli­gious or polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion. Its role is to share sci­en­tif­ic and legal infor­ma­tion, and active­ly sup­port informed choic­es by all actors of childbirth.

Today, par­ents are allowed less and less free­dom of choice for the places and atten­dants of child­birth. This is due to two major rea­sons: first, the pur­suit of a prof­it-mak­ing pol­i­cy enforced by a secu­ri­ty dis­course devoid of any sci­en­tif­i­cal ground­ing, and the fear of lit­i­ga­tion. The mar­ket­ting of birth, in France, is obvi­ous in the dis­man­tling of small obstet­ri­cal units to the ben­e­fit of “birth fac­to­ries”. Fear of lit­i­ga­tion has pushed pro­fes­sion­al atten­dants to shel­ter behind pro­to­cols impos­ing an increas­ing num­ber of inter­ven­tions, most of which are use­less or detri­men­tal to the nat­ur­al process of birthing. For instance, the cas­cade of iatroge­nous inter­ven­tions often starts with induc­tion of labour for the sake of reduc­ing hos­pi­tal costs thanks to the sched­ul­ing of team­work. This absur­di­ty of the “birth machine” has been put in the right words by Prof. Mali­nas, a gynecologist-obstretician:

“The task of tra­di­tion­al obstet­rics was to mon­i­tor a phys­i­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, being ready to act at every moment. Mod­ern obstet­rics aims at dis­rupt­ing this process in such a way that inter­ven­tions will become vital at the very moment there is avail­able staff. This is much more dif­fi­cult!” (Le Dauphiné Libéré, 8 May 1994)

Though AFAR’s ter­ri­to­ry is French-speak­ing coun­tries, it is bound to work with inter­na­tion­al part­ners on spe­cif­ic actions. Among these will be the shar­ing of its on-line data­base of bib­li­o­graph­ic ref­er­ences. Its oper­a­tion may be demon­strat­ed click­ing the “épi­siotomie” link on the page: <https://afar.info/biblio-liens.htm> [link not checked]
Access to this doc­u­men­tary resource will soon become bilin­gual. AFAR wel­comes well-trained edi­tors will­ing to take part in adding con­tent to its data­base which will remain acces­si­ble to all Inter­net users.

The next inter­na­tion­al action will be AFAR’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Euro­pean Social Forum <http://www.fse-esf.org/> [link not checked] which is due to take place near Paris on 12–15 Novem­ber this year. AFAR is in the process of sub­mit­ting a pro­pos­al for a work­shop on the top­ic of birth rights and free­dom, in which we hope to involve a num­ber of non-prof­it soci­eties in France, plus more in the UK and oth­er neigh­bour­ing countries.

The third action will be SMAR, the world­wide week for respect­ed child­birth (Semaine Mon­di­ale de l’Ac­couche­ment Respec­té) which has been sched­uled on May 3–9, 2004. The top­ic for 2004 will be “Epi­sioto­my, gen­i­tal muti­la­tion”. Our pre­sen­ta­tion page of SMAR on <https://afar.info/smar2004.htm> [link not checked] will short­ly be avail­able in English.

The new phase of birth activism embod­ied in the launch­ing of AFAR has become pos­si­ble thanks to an increas­ing mobil­i­sa­tion of cit­i­zens in France and French-speak­ing coun­tries: more arti­cles in broad-dis­tri­b­u­tion mag­a­zines, more items on the TV and radio, more books… such as the recent one on women and par­en­t’s rights, by Sophie Gamelin and Mar­tine Herzog-Evans:Les droits des mères (1) : La grossesse et l’ac­couche­ment ; Les droits des mères (2) : Les pre­miers mois. Paris : L’Har­mat­tan. <http://perinatalite.chez.tiscali.fr/livre-droit/presentation.htm>[link not checked]

The snow­ball effect of these inter­ven­tions in the mass media is encour­ag­ing at a time the sit­u­a­tion of the French birth pol­i­cy is wors­en­ing in the direc­tion of hyper­me­d­ical­i­sa­tion. It is felt that the ground of action for the AFAR will be the places in which recent laws on informed con­sent and free­dom of choice are still being ignored. AFAR’s ambi­tion is to sup­port the birth options of its mem­bers thanks to the avail­abil­i­ty of sci­en­tif­ic data, legal infor­ma­tion, and tak­ing legal action when­ev­er nec­es­sary. Cur­rent­ly, its law coun­sel­lors are focussing on birth plans, their con­tents and sub­mis­sion pro­ce­dures in the frame­work of con­trac­tu­al links between the care­givers and users of the health system.

Laisser un commentaire

Ce site utilise Akismet pour réduire les indésirables. En savoir plus sur la façon dont les données de vos commentaires sont traitées.