How The Internet Spawned A Baby-Killing Cult

the US listen to Solid Points. If there's non Americans listening to this podcast, what the hell are they doing? Like this is they don't get our freedom, our freedom of speech, that's ours and ours alone, Caitlin. The best thing about freedom of speech is limiting it to a small number of people. Yes, I don't agree, but I see your point. Yeah, I firmly disagree with what just happened, and I take back my praise of your introduction. Hello,

international listeners, we love you. Yeah. I bet they're from all over the world. Yes, Canada, yes, Japan. Yes, Canada is just Alaska's Mexico. Mexico and Canada are both much better countries. Um, almost spit my soup on the mic. Oh my god, it was a bad time to try to eat soup. Sorry, I took a week in rural America to to clear my head and get some writing done, and it has made me insult our neighbors to the north and south for no reason. You did that before? Come on, I did, I did? I did. I love

insulting nations for no reason. Well, my guest today, as as you just heard from, is Caitlin Duranti. Caitlin, how are you doing today? I'm doing very well. I'm delighted to be here now, Caitlin. You're the co host of the Bechtel cast Um and you you have guessed it on behind the bastards before. We had a long talk about I think a man both of us consider a dear friend now, Lafayette Ron Hubbard. Yes, yes, he just

he's coming to my birthday party soon. Oh good. You know I think he's at all of our birthday parties, convincing our small children to deliver letters for him on his boat crusade to find gold in the ocean. Yes, god, I miss him. Well, we're not talking about that today, Caitlin, And we're talking about the goat Testical doctor either, right, No, we're not talking about the goat Testical got about her, that fucker that guy. Yeah, like Alex Jones, but with

goat testicles. No, today we're talking about the free birthing community. Caitlin, have you ever heard of the free birthing community. I don't know that I have, Robert. Oh boy, Caitlin. Yes, you're you're gonna, You're gonna enjoy this. I mean, so, I I got where to start. I I wrote a little introduction here, and I don't think I'm gonna read it.

I think we're just gonna we're just gonna dig into it. Um. Yeah, the nexus of my introduction was that back in the day, you know, there's this one website that's kind of like the Tower of Babbel for the Internet, that Something Awful Forums. It's where four Chain came out of. It's where like doxing was very first practiced. It's where a lot of like meme culture originated from. UM and that those forums had a motto, and that motto was the Internet makes

you stupid. And it was just at the time, because it's like the late nineties, early two thousand's is when

like Something Awful was really at its most relevant. Yeah, so it was, and it was and you were you remember then Caitlin, when the Internet didn't really matter, when like it was just sort of the silly thing, and people like mainstream TV or news kind of made fun of people who were on the Internet a lot, like it wasn't taken very seriously, and so I think that's what the motto kind of meant then, was just like

the Internet's dumb. But as the years have gone by and the Internet has eaten the world, I've come to

believe in those words very literally. The Internet does actually make people stupid um and I think to the free birth in community in particular is a perfect example of how this works, because, thanks to the wonders of the modern Internet and most particularly Facebook, a bunch of otherwise well meaning, functional human beings have left a trail of dead babies in their wake, not because they wanted to kill babies, but because the Internet broke their brains. And

that's the story we're going to tell today. Wow, okay, sided this is a dead baby episode. Oh my okay, wait okay. Initial question, preliminary question, do you know anything? I don't know anything about the free birthing community, but I have a feeling that there's got to be some overlap between it, and just based on what I think it is, based on the name alone, overlap between that community and the anti vaxers. You absolutely, oh yeah, okay

for god, oh my god. Um yeah, it's uh, it's pretty cool, Caitlin, and I want to welcome you, by the way, into a really rarefied circle of of Bastard's pod guests. Uh. Currently, Sophia Alexandria Billy Wayne Davis are the only two members of the Dead Babies Episodes sub club, So very can we get a couple of aircorns in there for for the third member of our Dead Baby Triumvirate? Yes, I just added so much. Are you wandered, Caitlin? I'm so honored? And what what a group to be a

part of. I mean, the I and Sophia, I mean, what what terrific people, so rarefied air verified air now, Caitlin. Uh, if you, if you, or at least sorry not even you, Caitlin. If you the listener at home have heard about the free birthing community recently, it's probably because of a fabulous NBC News article by Brandy's a Drowsney that dropped a couple of days ago, and the article's title was I

brainwashed myself with the internet. Uh. It is the story of a twenty eight year old woman on the West Coast, pseudonymed Judith, who found yourself slowly drawn into a series of online communities of women who believe that the best way to give birth is with no medicine, no doctor, and no midwife. So, you know, we're all aware that there's like home birthing um sort of like communities and stuff. These are people who are like that, but they're like,

but midwives are evil too. Oh wow, I don't want anyone who knows that goddamn thing about medicine around for my birth. Like that's the gist of these people, A right, yeah, yeah, So that's a fun thing that I hadn't realized existed

until I read this article. And the t l d R of the story is that Judith left her baby in her belly for way too long, more than forty two weeks, because these people believe, among other things, that having your labor induced, you know, medically is um is on an awful thing to do and an unnecessary thing to do. So she was pregnant almost three weeks past the nine month mark and refused to go to the hospital and her baby died inside of her um. Yeah, this is the first time we've had a first dead

baby on page one. We're not even halfway through page one. Yeah, I bring that out in people, you know, the dead, the dead babies. I don't know what I meant by that. Yeah, I got wet. I just my presence encourages people to talk about dead babies, as I think what I meant, Well, that's good. Well we'll be talking about a number of

them today. So obviously, Judith's story was a traumatic, painful nightmare. UM. And she's far from the only person that this kind of nightmares happened to as a result of the free birth in community. Uh. The NBC article itself links to a November two, eighteen Daily Beast article by Emily Sugarman. The article's title is she wanted a free birth at home, when the baby died, the attacks began, and it's it's the story of a woman named Lisa and her would

be daughter, Journey Moon. Uh. Lisa got drawn into the free birth in community via like Facebook groups and podcasts, and her baby died. Uh. And then she was harassed by a bunch of people online who are angry that she'd killed her baby who had been infiltrating these free birth and communities. It's a mess of a story, and the tales of these two women comprise about of the public discourse around free birthing at the moment. It's kind

of very recently burst onto the scene. But there's so much more here under the surface, uh, than is even in both of these very well written articles, And today I I felt like what I could do to add to this is dig a little bit deeper into where the free birth in community comes from and the individual I'm gonna call himbastards who were aspond posible for starting what is effectively a weird cult dedicated to getting people to basically kill their babies by not having anyone who

knows anything about medicine around when they come out of people. Cool fun story. Can't wait? You sound really motivated by this to be a part of this fun tale. I so am you. You have no idea, just I I have no ability to like emote with my voice, but um,

I am very excited to learn about. Call that v moting. Okay, Yeah, Now, free birthing obviously has its origins and the natural home birth movement, and the term home birth started being used in the mid eighteen hundreds as hospital births became more common. At present, most so called developed nations, you know, that's the term generally used. I don't like it, but it's kind of hard to find. Counter terms sometimes have home

birthing rates of less than one percent um. It's broadly accurate to say that the end of home birth thing as a normal thing, you know, the end of that being the way most babies were born has corresponded with a massive reduction in the rate of both infant and mother deaths in childbirth. So we stopped giving birth at home, started giving birth in hospitals with doctors and a lot

less babies and moms die, right, pretty obvious. But here's where it gets weird, because the situation isn't quite that simple. The United States today has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the Western world. Six of our infants die for every thousand live births, which puts the US on par with such healthcare powerhouses as Serbia and Malaysia. Despite regular advances in technology, matters, matters are actually getting a lot worse for American mothers at a startlingly rapid rate.

A pregnant woman in the US today is fifty more likely to die in childbirth than her mother was. Yeah, like, that's an enormous jump in mama and baby deaths. We woul account for that? What accounts for that? Well, there's there's a number of intersecting factors here. One of the

ones given regularly is eroding social support for women. Um So as a result of this like crusade against birth control and planned parenthood by the right in our country, women's access to obstetric services in rural U S counties has collapsed. UH. Nine percent of all rural American women lost hospital obstetric services between two thousand and two thousand fourteen. UH. The shocking expensive birth plays a major role in this. Two people who just can't afford to to do it

in a hospital. So between the cost and the sheer lack of access, the fact that growing communities of American women have been turning to home birth is not weird um and it's not necessarily harmful either. The Netherlands actually has a really high rate of home births. In two thousand nine, the largest study of its kind was conducted there, analyzing more than five thousand births and finding no difference in the birth or death rates of home births versus

hospital births. And you'll hear the studies cited a lot by home birthing advocates, and they all tend to leave out something critical, which is that the home birthing there's in this Netherlands study, we're all women who were determined by a doctor beforehand to have low risk pregnancies. So if you have a competent midwife and if a doctor is consulted first to make sure you're a low risk pregnancy, home birthing can be perfectly safe. That's the one thing

I want to get out of the way first. But our free birthing friends who are going to be talking about today, they don't use midwives and they for sure as ship don't consult doctors um. And most of the Facebook groups with these people gather explicitly list advising another person to seek medical attention as a bannable offense. So they'll say, like, if you advise anyone to go to a doctor to induce pregnancy to like talk to an O, B. G. Y in or whatever, um like, we'll kick you out

of the group because this is not about that. Okay, so they these are the people I feel like, these are the people who, like if they were uh, you know, convicted of a time, or they had to go to court or something, they'd be like, I'm going to represent myself, Like I don't need a lawyer, I'm on my own. Wow. Yeah, there's that phrase, like a person who defends themselves in court has a fool for a lawyer. I guess a

person who delivers their own baby as a fool for obstetrician. Yes. Yeah, So the first Facebook page that comes up now when you google free birth Facebook group currently hosts an image meme that says we are all descendants of someone who birthed at home without a licensed midwife. Um, and that is true, But you could just as easily say we're all descendants of someone who died at home giving birth

without any sort of medical assistance, because that's equally true. Right. Yeah, we all have a gramma here who got through a couple of babies and then couldn't make it past fifth or sixth or whatever. Right, Yeah, this is gonna be a fun one. That just made me think, like, who, like, did I have like a great great great great grandmother who like died during childbirth, but like their baby survived, and like I'm the descendant of Yeah, that's got to

be true for us. Of us, there's no one who's somewhere in their family line doesn't have multiple people who died during childbirth. Like that's that's just a guarantee, just because of the way the world biology and ship worked and works. So when we're when we're trying to unravel the mystery of how this deadly freebirth and community came to, because I wanted to kind of trace it back to its origins. And my first question when I started doing that was when did this whole movement split off from

just the home birthing movement? And as best as I can tell, a lot of it traces back to the story of one woman named Catherine's Skull now MS. Skull was a former Chicago police officer, and she was pregnant with her fifth child um back in two thousand eight. She was admitted to Rush University Medical Center and received an unpleasant surprise. Her normal obstetrician was out of town on vacation, so instead of the doctor she was comfortable with, she was attended to by a stranger and a stranger

who happened to be a really big asshole according to MS. Yeah, yeah, he sucks. This guy's Dr Scott Pierce is his name, and he apparently started their interaction by yelling at her for not coming in earlier and not calling before coming in. He informed her that because she had not given them enough warning, there was no time for him to give her pain medication. Then he told her that she deserved to be in pain for not giving the hospital more

lead time, saying sometimes pain is the best teacher. Well, it's like, not not a great doctor. Um. He next gave her an extremely rough vaginal exam that, like she described as unnecessarily rough and painful while she was in mid contraction um, and then he ordered her to begin

pushing before she was fully dilated. He told her repeatedly that her baby might die, and had a loud phone conversation in the next room about abortion, telling another one of his patients that stupid woman, she has no business being pregnant. So pretty bad story. Yeah, yeah, not how you want a pregnancy to go. Um. And Catherine Scholl is not the bastard here. She filed a civil suit

against Dr Pierce. Uh. He was eventually fined five hundred dollars and sentenced to one year of medical probation, which seems like a reasonably fair punishment for his crime. Yeah, I would well find only five and I think the fine could have been higher. The fine should have been higher. But like, yeah, he was definitely like when a medical board looked into it, they found out that like, yeah, this guy's behavior was completely unacceptable and the story of

so like Catherine School did nothing wrong. Um, she was abused by a doctor, she filed a suit against him, and he was punished. You know, we could argue the punishment should have been more, but her part of the story, she acted perfectly reasonably. But the story of Catherine's School took off like wild fire among the networks of mommy blogs dedicated to the natural birthing movement UM, and without knowing it, school became a rallying point for other women

who had bad experiences with their doctors during childbirth. School story helped to galvanize a community of birthing extremists who had started organizing online, and one of the very first and perhaps the founder of the free birthing movement was an Australian woman named Jeannette Frasier. Jeanette founded the website Joyous Birth in two thousand seven. In December of that year, she coined the term birth rape in a blog entry to refer to what she thought people like Dr Pierce

were doing to their patients. Birth rape. Yeah. Um so here's here's kind of her explaining what that means. I don't care if you don't like the word or the idea. It's real, So get used to it. Survivors are angry and we're starting to talk about it. Remember that old anti violent slogan, Well, it means even in hospitals and even in stupid hospital gowns, when I say no, it means no. When you shove your arm and a woman

who's screaming no, that's rape. When you rupture those membranes because you have to tick the box that comply with protocol, even when the woman screams no, that's rape. When you slash a woman's vagina with scissors and she's screaming no, that's rape. And on the streets that would earn you a jail sentence. Your green gown is not protection. Do that to me and I will charge you. Don't forget it. We are angry, and we are powerful. We have survived

your raping protocols, so we can survive anything. Be afraid, and don't underestimate us. And I'm curious kind of for your thoughts on that. I'll tell you sort of where eye land on this, which is that I'm sure there are a lot of things that happen to women who are giving birth that they may say no about. Because once you're giving birth to a baby, the doctor is going to like legally has to do whatever he can or she can do to make sure that baby comes

out alive. And you might not in the moment want that, but you're in a hospital and that's kind of the way hospitals go. And I'm I'm personally like, obviously I'm very pro choice, but at the point in which that baby is coming out, like the doctor is equally beholden to the baby and to the mother. Um, that's kind of how I think, Yeah, I'm interested in Yeah, I

mean the child. Like that's that does like complicate matters because, um, you know, on one hand, you have you know, I kind of see what she's saying, um in this in this definition of this term um of you know, doctors like you know, doing things that could be considered rape or assault. Um. And like you know, the women are you know, the people who are giving birth not giving consent, but you know the doctor is doing something that they deem medically necessary for you know, the safety of the

baby perhaps. So that is a very complicated thing. UM. Okay, so I okay, well let's let's do this. Uh. I don't know if if you know this, Robert or um, if any listeners are aware of a podcast that I've been working on called Sludge An American health Care Story so um, and this is all about a recent experience I had with the um American health care system. Spoiler shit it's it was ship. So I. And I'm not saying that every you know, healthcare experience of every person

in the US is shitty. It's not if you have a million dollars or more so. But you know, I this is all to say that I have hearing people's stories because I've started to interview other people with their sort of medical nightmare stories, and I'm learning all these different things about how certain like medical protocol is not

very good. Um. One specific example I will site is the way that the medical community treats like intersects baby these um, which is horrible, and they perform procedures and surgeries that the babies can't consent to um and that the parents often don't know enough about the situation, you know, just all these things. So on one hand, like, yes, uh, they're like having people who know about childbirth and who know about um protocol for medical protocol for childbirth should

be present um at a childbirth. But there's also certain things that medical professionals sometimes do that are perhaps violating patients. Yeah, I have very complicated feelings about it. Is really complicated. I don't like calling it rape because I don't know.

Rape is a very specific thing. And I understand how some of the trauma you know of of undergoing being forced to undergo a medical procedure you don't uh want to undergo UM or don't you know are are are kind of not present enough mentally to like understand what's happening to you because you're in this like really altered state. Uh, Like I understand how that would be traumatic, UM, but

I I feel weird about saying that. Like if a doctor does something you don't want because he's trying to save your baby's life, um, that that's the same as rape. That that's weird to me. I do, but like there's a bunch of ship obviously that like yeah, doctors do without the consent of the baby, like with intersex babies. And also like you can make an argument about circumcision where it's like that's not a medically necessary thing you're doing and the child should maybe have some say and

what happens to its own body. Um So like yeah, like this is like this whole issue. Like there, I I want to kind of highlight that, like, while this community we're talking about I think is fundamentally toxic, there are some reasonable questions that like start that we're being asked at the start of this, and I think this woman, Jeanette Fraser, is going too far and kind of yeah, we'll talk about her more in a bit, but I don't think like there she's entirely and these other people

are entirely coming out of an unreasonable place. The health care system and the child birthing system in this country is fucked. And like the fact that women today are likely to die in childbirth is as much evidence as you need to know about that. Um, I wonder it's really messy. I wonder if she just came up with that term birth rape because it sounds sort of like birth rate. And she's like, won't this be a catchy phrase or something I don't like? Um, I think you

know what? That might be the case. We'll we'll see if you how you think about that? When we finished talking about Jeanette Fraser. But Robert, do you want to know what else is a really catchy phrase? Oh? I was gonna say, do you want to know what? Won't perform medical procedures on your child? Gina tell you without their consent? Oh, I think that's our our our our sponsors who offer that. That is the only guarantee we make about our sponsors, Mike Bloomberg and the Raytheon Corporation.

They will not order surgery on your children. I can't vouch for Mike Bloomberg on that. No, he will. He will absolutely order. Yeah. No, why we shouldn't have en Raytheon will as well. Um, so enjoy these words from our sponsors, who may, in fact order your children to

undergo medical procedures that are not strictly necessary. Adds We're back. Okay, So we're talking about this woman Jeanette Fraser who coins the term birth rape um, and she has this website Joyous Birth and Joyous Birth advocated for legal reform around pregnancy, and the core ideology on display there is the same core ideology that we saw creep up later in the free birth in community UM, and the basic idea is that women should be the absolute arbiters of what happens

during their pregnancy, which, like, there's aspects of that that sound reasonable, but like, obviously I do think there is a certain point where we're like, no, you you've got too human beings here now, and like you don't get to make every I don't know. I have a lot of issues in general with the amount of control parents have over what happens to their kids bodies. That worries me. Yeah, um, so yeah, this is a really messy and complicated thing, um.

But Joyous Birth it was very clearly from the beginning focused around the desire to like not have any medical procedures performed on your children, to do it all naturally or holistically, with like whatever remedies you could whip up in your kitchen. It had a forum with a few dozen members, and that forum had threads with titles like strep question mark, question mark? Can this be treated without antibiotics? Another ear infection? Dot? Dot dot? What can I do

to avoid the antibiotics? So not only so once they're children have been birth, assuming they survive, there's there against all medical Yeah that's really the kid's life. Okay, Yeah, there's a lot of talk about how can I avoid antibiotics for my children with bacterial infections? Uh. One of the threads from Mummy Juice just says blood and pooh question mark, which I'm sure it does not end with

a happy story. So uh, not a great community. We can agree there's some problems with the way uh childbirthing is handled by the medical establishment. But like, yeah, if you're typing out, my kid keeps getting ear infections, why how can I deal with this without treating it with medicine? Like, baby, you're doing a bad job. I don't know. Just give that kid some some goat testicles, secure all as we learned, or audit the child, give me lead out you know. Yeah,

so I it's it's it's pretty cool. Um. Now, I'm not exactly sure when all these women started using the term free birth to describe what they were advocating, but by March of two thousand nine that change had happened. Um And the first time I run across the word free birthing to refer this community is when Jeanette Fraser was interviewed by a website called The Age. Uh and I'm gonna quote from that interview. This is right before she was supposed to give birth to her fifth child.

Janette Frasier is in labor. Her plan is to drop the baby on the lounge room floor or wherever feels good at the time. Has she called the hospital to let them know what's happening. When you go on a skiing trip, do you call the hospital to say, I'm coming down the mountain? Can you set aside a spot for me in the emergency room? I don't think so, says Fraser, who's breathing sounds strained. Amazing logic. Yeah, I mean, they generally do have medical professionals at ski lodges and

stuff because of the dangers of skiing. But yeah, this is pretty much where we're in the conversation that started with me calling Frasier and asking if it was true that her organization, Joyous Birth, was advocating that women go it alone, giving birth at home with no midwife or general practitioner or bags of resuscitation gadgets. Free birthing. Plenty of women do it, she says. In fact, Fraser is

doing it right now. I prefer to be an autonomous care provider, she says, So that's kind of the terminology

used here. Yeah, I mean, okay, so I'm obviously all for like giving women agency over their bodies, right, Like that's important and it absolutely so it feels like this community they like started with that, but then have taken it far too far to the I mean, and I'm sure you're going to get into this soon, but like all I mean if we prefaced it the dead babies, Um, yeah, so like obviously the results aren't often good, it seems with this, uh, with free birthing, but like, oh, it's

just it's so annoying that they're like doing this under the guys of like, yes, women's autonomy and agency and look how important it is, because that is important, but then they've like bastardized it into this like disgusting killing baby enterprise. Like yeah, it's and it's it is frustrating to me that they're kind of co opting a lot of the language of the pro choice movement because it was like, when that baby is, you know, a clump of cells, when it's it's not capable of living independently

in any way, shape or form. I I think it would be horrible to give anyone but the mother control over her own body. But the point of that thing's been in there nine months and it's coming out and it can survive on its own, Like this is no longer just you here. There's an independent, living human being

that also has rights. Um. Yeah, And it is kind of messy drawing that line, but certainly at the point at which your forty one weeks pregnant, um, I think, Yeah, I don't know, especially just because like there, I mean, I don't know anything about childbirth. Uh, nor will I because I don't intend to have children ever. But like there are so many people who do intend to have children. Who's still like, there's there's only unless you're trained as

a midwife or a medical professional. It seems like a really dangerous thing to go at it. Yeah, And it's like these are people who are kind of like refusing for there to be any kind of like reasonable middle path here because you know, the evidence does show that, like, if you're checked out by a doctor war hand and you have a midwife, home birthing can be a totally safe process. But they're like, no, funk that midwife thing and fuck checking with a doctor. That's all a violation

of my rights. Um, which is dumb. I think. I think it's a dumb way to do things. It's not good. Yeah, So Jeanette is probably the clearest case for the founder of the free birthing movement and her baby, who she was pregnant with when that article was written. Roisen was born five days after the article dropped. Janette delivered him without assistance in her home, and Roisen was born alive

but not breathing. His heart was not beating properly. He was not stillborn, but he did come out in immediate need of expert resuscitation, and unfortunately no expert was available. And all Janets are Nica creams and herbal childbirthing remedies were useless in the face of this cold reality. Yeah, I'm gonna quote from the coroner's report about her her dead baby. Quote. Essentially, miss Fraser was quite unprepared for what happened. There was not even a hard flat surface

available on which Royson could be placed for resuscitation. So these three amateurs, Miss Fraser, Mr. Stokes and Miss Deuce first placed the child on the rim of the inflatable pool, and when that proved unsatisfactory, used a chair. They were unable to abandon the chair and place Royson on the floor in order to effectively administer CPR, because the placenta not having been delivered, that was as far as she

would reach. Evidently, it appeared to nobody present to clamp and cut the cord, and anyway, Miss Deuce told the inquest she had not been aware of the ready availability of any equipment to enable her to do so. According to Missduce, further difficulties were encountered in administering CPR because Royson was slippery and difficult to hold, and evidently it did not occur to anybody to wrap her in a towel, though there were towels nearby. Yeah, yeah, it's sucked up. Wow.

So yeah, and it came like this, I mean, this is like straight up negligence right where like that I would I would say, so the baby died and the mom was responsible, Like is she a murderer. Now like does she face No, she legally know and in most parts of the world she will not legally face consequences

for this. Um. You know, it's kind of thing we're only just now within a pretty recent period of time where like parents would get start to get in trouble in some places for like refusing to give their kids necessary blood transfusions because of a religious belief, Like you can still get away with that actually in a number of places. Um, So this is this is not a thing where like the women who do this are generally prosecuted at all. Um. Although, yeah, I would agree with you,

this seems like negligence of maybe a criminal nature. Yeah, it's like manslaughter. Maybe I don't like some baby slaughter. Baby it's a horrible phrase. So that's Jeanette Fraser, one of the founders of the Free Birthing movement, and the other woman usually given as a founder for the free

birthing movement is Laura Shanley. She was interviewed in December of two thousand eight, the same month Catherine's Skull filed charges against her doctor, uh and she was interviewed for an ABC News article titled Mothers to Be saying no to modern medicine. Now, that article does not use the term free birthing, which is part of why I think Jeanette Fraser probably gets the credit for that, but it

does mention a dead baby, Laura Shanley's dead baby. To be precise, Shanley had successfully delivered her first four children at home. She delivered the fifth two, but he had a rare heart deformity and he died. Shanley claims that said nothing at all to do with the fact that she chose to give birth without any expert medical care present. Quote.

If you have a baby that's born at home, and especially in an unassisted birth, regardless of the fact that the coroner said this baby would not have survived, you know, there are still people that will blame me for my baby's death, Shanley said, And that's just something I have to accept now. I'm not competent to diagnose whether Shanley's child would have died if he'd been born in a hospital.

But someone who is competent is Dr Amy Tutor, an obstite Ristian gynecologist who runs a blog called The Skeptical oh B and focus is mainly on busting misinformation about pregnancy. She has a special hatred for free birthing and notes of Miss Shanley's pregnancy she made no attempt to stop the premature birth of a son and watched him die in the bathtub. So yeah, two founders of the movement to dead babies. That's where we're starting here. Okay, cool stuff, huh,

really really cool stuff. Caitlin is looking at me like, Sophie, why did you bring me here? How you feeling, Kitlin? Um? You know, I am really just frustrated by the willful negligence of this this movement. I'll buy your supe plantation next time we get dinner. Thank you so much? Are we are five pages in Caitlin, and we have four dead babies, so we are almost one dead baby per page to this. Wow? Yeah, what cool? What a rate?

What a rate? So Shanley and Fraser were the two earliest, loudest voices and the splinter of the home birthing movement that turned into free birthing. Uh. They both lad large online communities that increasingly pushed their members away from trusting

actual medical professionals for anything. Dr Tutur blames them for a lot of this, and she considers their activism to be the result of extreme emotional immaturity, and she wrote on her blog quote free Birthers are monstrously egotistical, reflexively defiant of authority, unwilling to admit mistakes and capable of accepting responsibility for their own actions, and entirely devoid of

any empathy for their suffering babies. Yeah, says sums up for me that I wonder if they're all just like narcissy, like, yeah, narcissis yeah, Like, um, I don't need a doctor. I'm a genius and I can handle this on my own.

I don't think all of the women who get sucked into it are I think most of them are probably pretty normal people who are kind of maybe more inclined to like sort of hippie dippy stuff and liked like off the grid, a lot of like off the grids, sort of like you know, back to nature, almost survivalist kind of women get really into this because they're attracted

to the idea of self sufficiency. But I do think the people at the head of this movement, the women who are sort of like driving it, I think there is a lot of narcissism, um and you can see that in the things that they say. Um uh. For example, in the wake of her baby's death, Janet Frasier made this defiant statement, my birth rape with my first child is traumatic. My still birth was not. Mm hmm yeah. Um that just sounds like a lie to justify what

she's doing. And also like, regardless of what happened with your first child, that baby is alive, it gets yeah, your other baby is not, and yeah, note the difference, like yeah, yeah, yeah. So another story that a doctor to tour sites of like kind of narcissism at the heart of a lot of these free birthing people is the case of a woman named Paula p A A l A. Her infant son was born extremely early, weighing

only one pound six ounces. He had to spend four months in the n I See You and only survived due to intense medical intervention. Paula was forced to give birth in the hospital because something was very clearly wrong with her pregnancy, but she still insisted on giving birth as close to alone as she possibly could. And I'm just going to read what she wrote on her Facebook page for a community of other free birthers because it's

it's fucking wild. I took out my ivy lines. Nothing was being pumped into them at that point anyway, and my hospital bracelet. I wanted to take a shower with both arms free of junk. I figured they could put that crap back on me if it was an emergency, but I needed to feel like myself again. Did dimension They tracked and measured everything that came out of my body. Shortly thereafter, she was an actively her with the premature baby. She retreated to the hospital bathroom to decide what to do.

Option one, she wrote, called the nurses and either be prodded while berthing right there, or be wheeled in for an emergency C section. Option to wake my husband and labor with him secretly, but then I know he'd lose his cool and call for help. Option three labor by myself with my baby just us, and I'd birth him and catch him and then call for help. Obviously, I went for option three. It seemed like the safest thing

for my baby and myself At the time. The studies I'd read didn't report benefits for a C section for babies of his age. That vaginal would have been safer, and I knew he'd get drugged up and controlled by strangers, was going to make things dangerous for me. After a couple of painful contractions by the toilet, I laid out a couple of Chuck's padge to catch the blood and crap,

I wish there was coming. Yeah. So, and she she writes like this about like how good it is and how important what she's doing is for the safety of her baby, um, and ignores the fact that her baby only surve life, being born four months prematurely because of intense medical intervention, because of doctors and nurses working incredibly hard with advanced equipment to keep the baby alive. Um. She makes it all into a story about how cool it is that she gave birth hiding alone in a

bathroom without telling any of the medical professionals around her. Yeah. So that's also this movement seems, among many things, like a disdain for science. Like they're just like science is, um not cool? But you know when you feel my baby potentially like the fact that I'm in control and not some doctor, right not, I mean, it's it's the like I said, it's the anti vaxer thing, right, It's just like, um, how could this possibly help even though

this like that. It's just yeah, the the ignoring, the the science, the fact expind it all. Wowika, Yeah, it's pretty cool, Caitlin, it's pretty cool. I love it. Yeah so um. Paula gave herself enormous credit for cheating the system and giving birth unassisted while ignoring the hard work of professionals. Her defiant interpretation of a situation she probably made worse was interpreted as a story of self reliance by her fellow free birthers instead of a cautionary tale.

It reinforced dangerous ideas in the heads of dozens of women. In the years since Jeanette Fraser's baby died, the free birthing movement has grown like the old right, like the bleached drinking cult, like Q and on, and like dozens of other toxic subcultures in the fertile substrate provided by Facebook.

Like every subculture, it developed its own media ecosystem, with its own popular podcasts and news websites and influencers, all of whom prey upon the ever growing market of hippie, dippy new mothers to be who don't trust Western medicine. And that's how Judith, the subject of that viral NBC article found out about free birthing. I'm going to quote from that article. Now. Judith worked at a flower shop. The daily drive was an hour outside of town, time

she filled by listening to podcasts. When she got pregnant, she devoured episodes of The Birth Hour and Indie Birth, popular programs on which women shared their childbirth stories, which ranged from hospital to home births. But it was the Free Birth podcast that really spoke to Judith. Build as a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring, and

celebrating their autonomous choices in childbirth. The podcast features Emily Saldia thirty five, a Los Angeles freebirth advocate and founder of the Freebirth Society. The group has forty six thousand followers on Instagram and it's podcast hit a million downloads last month. Yeah, that's too many. My podcast doesn't even get that much. And it's amazing, not horrible downloads. A

million downloads in a year. Okay, well, yeah that too many downloads to Instagram followers, that's thousands of women potentially endangering their babies. Um, which is God not great, not ideal. Robert, do you want to know what will not endanger I don't. I can't even vouch for this because we are because we're absolutely supported by Mike Bloomberg. Actually, Sophie, I'm glad you brought that up because I have this new ad copy from Mike Bloomberg. So I'm just gonna read that

right now. Vote from Mike in he will endanger your babies. That's the Mike Bloomberg promise. He absolutely promises to endanger everyone's baby if elected president, and it is in fact, the only promise he's willing to make. So, you know, a bold stance by Mike Bloomberg. You gotta respect it. Yeah, you heard it here, folks. That is an official Bloomberg campaign ad. Mike Bloomberg will endanger your babies. Nod A required, No India required. He'll do that for free. All right,

here's some other ads. We're back. So we're talking about this kind of network of free birthing media circles, primarily podcasts, and this is part of you know, Caitlin, Podcasting has been good to both of us. Um I make u my living at it, and I enjoy it, and I think I enjoy other people's podcasts that they make, including the Bechtel Cast. Your podcast. I worry a lot about podcasts though, UM, and this is we're getting a little

off topic. But like if you read mine comp which everybody ought to UM, one of the points Adolf Hitler makes is that like the written word, essentially newspapers and books by philosolity, that none of that ship convinces large amounts of people of anything. The human voice is what can can change people's minds and huge numbers and shift the destinies of nations. Like that's what is the right voice at the right time, UM. Saying the right things can be hypnotizing to large numbers of people, and I

think that's what happens to UM. To this young woman, Judith, she's she's spending two three hours a day in the car, she lives out in the sticks. She's listening to the podcast to help pass the time. And these women on this free birthing podcast, in the way that podcasting hosts become to us, becomes sort of like surrogate friends, and she trust them. And obviously she trusts these women on

this podcast more than she trusts some doctors. She's going to meet a couple of times, UM, and it's probably going to be very short on time and like that. This is one of the things that scares me about podcasts. Um, yeah, yeah, I I hadn't even fully I tell you rather, Yeah, I hadn't fully appreciated the power of the voice, the human voice, and how influential it can be. That is scary, Okay,

I will Yeah, I think on this a bit. I mean, on the lighthearted an event, we can tell people to buy bolt cutters and and and the like to to break into the mansions of the wealthy when society collapses. But like on the dark side of it, all this stuff happens too, so it's really a mixed bag podcasting. Thanks. Well, didn't we learn about this with Dr John Brinkley? Was that his name? Who like we found that whole radio thing and was just hawking his his uh fake medicine. Yeah,

there's many people over the rail knew about this. Is that back in the day, you know, Brinkley was only able to do that because he had a huge amount of money from his goatball business to establish a radio station with. Now anybody can do this. Anybody with any really fucking dumb idea can build a whole community dedicated to that dumb idea. For whom that dumb idea will become more important than anything else, even the lives of their children. So the podcasts and supporting art industry. Oh,

it's good stuff. It's real good stuff. Everything's a nightmare. So on the Free Birthing Podcast, Emily Saldia hosted the most positive stories of free births. Judith was particularly taken by the tale of one woman who gave birth out in an unpowered yurt in the mountains of California, with quote only her husband and a dog she called her midwolf. Oh no, do not obstetricians. They're wonderful animals, but they cannot help in a birthing. No. That also just ruined

puns for the rest of my life. I know, and to this day, I know, to this day the woman who decided to call her dog her mid wolf. That's the thing she's proud of. Stuff is that bit of word play. And I hate it Wolf. I can't get over. I'm looking in and is shaking her head, going this is not right, but this is this is like an

aspect of this stories. Like a lot of these women are like off the grid women, women who live on arms and stuff, who are actually like probably really competent in a lot of ways because it's hard to live that way. I have lived that way, and it's incredibly difficult and it requires an amount of fortitude. And that's probably why women like Judith are able to go weeks past their due date and like the horrible pain that

that involves, because they're tough people. Um and I there's an extent to it, like I, I fucking hate hospitals, um and I avoid them at all goddamn costs. I like living out in the middle of nowhere. Uh. And I like not relying on anyone for you know things of of of my daily necessities. I enjoy that. I understand those impulses. But when you're bringing a baby into the world, your personal level of comfort with you know, all that matters less than the child's survival. It just does.

That's part of being a parent, right, is that, like you put the child first. That's why I don't have a kid. That's why we've been able to perpetuate the species. Yeah, caring for the I know, I put Robert over myself. I pick Robert over myself all the time because he used my son. But I know, I know, and uh, that's why you've got three bullets in your shoulder. I know. So I appreciate you jumping in between me and that California Highway Patrol officer. But that's a story for another

day and another podcast. Um. So, Judith becomes obsessed with these stories of you know, these women having free births in these like amazing and exotic locales in the woods on top of mountains in foreign countries. Um and she she like like loves this stuff and listens to it every day and and recalled later to NBC, I became obsessed. I would just wonder what's my story going to be like? And think I want my story to be as badass

as their stories. So you see, like there's a level of danger here too, and the way that online communities do everyone pushes each other more extreme. You gave birth in an unpowered your well, fuck it, I'll give birth and a ave or something like that. Like So, like many Americans, Judith entered into this world with a distrust of doctors. She'd been put under anesthesia as a child and found the experience frightening. As a college student, a doctor shrubbed off her in her ear pain, ignoring what

she thought was a real issue. Quote, just calculating all the experiences I've had with doctors, I never felt heard, I never felt listened to. And this is an extremely common complaint from women who give birth in the United States, very common. A lot of women will tell you I didn't think the doctor was listening to me. I didn't feel like they cared about my pain or my situation.

I mean, I mean it's not just then that's I mean, listen to sludge, you guys, listen to Yeah, like, every every part of my story is that many people's stories, which is why we need such a major overhaul of the American healthcare system, because it is full of a lot of medical professionals who are uh you, you know, exhibiting certain biases against certain demographics of people, largely women, people of color, queer people, people with invisible disabilities, plus

size people. I mean, so many groups of people are ignored or their pain isn't believed or anything like that. And uh, like, I can understand why certain people would be like, yeah, I don't want to deal with like the health care system. It's completely screwed me over, it's completely neglected me. But I mean so that, I mean, the problem it is this system that is so broken.

But it's a lot of the problem is like everything you've said is very valid, and I would add to that, a lot of where these women go wrong is like they recognize that the system is fucked up, and it is, and they say, like the problem is then the doctors, we need to just not have doctor is involved, and it's like no, no, no. A big part of the problem is actually there aren't nearly enough doctors and they're

all overworked. So even like the really good ones and the ones who are capable of, like you know, transcending those biases are also just like overworked and exhausted and sleep deprived and piste off a lot of the time. And maybe theyre don't give you the best bedside manner

because they're they're doing way too much work. And if we had a lot more doctors, not only would you have a wider a variety of life experiences among medical professionals, and so you'd have more doctors who might understand members of these groups, but you would also have less exhausted doctors and so they'd be able to provide better care. Um, there's so many problems with our So what we need, what we need is for anyone who's considering starting a podcast,

don't do it. There's too many. Become a doctor instead, every single one of you. Stop listening to our podcasts and go to medicals. You know how easy it is to just become a doctor. Just do that. Look, if you're listening to this podcast where you're putting up drywall for your job as a day labor, drop that fucking drywall hammer or whatever you used to put up drywall and go become a doctor right now, right now. Podcasts over. Yeah.

So um. Judith is kind of very primed by her past bad experiences with doctors to distrust doctors in the first place. So when she starts listening to this Free Birthing podcast and hearing its hosts used terms like industrial obstetric tyranny, and birth rape, she was ready to graft those words and the idea behind them onto her life.

She watched the Free Birth Society's introduction video hosted by instructor Yolanda Norris Clark and the business partner of Emily Saldayah, the host of the Free Birthing podcast, and I want you to listen to how Yolanda introduces herself in this video, Sophie, that's your queue. Oh, that's my cue. That's your cue. I'm Yolanda Clark. I'm a writer, a birth consultant, and I'm the director of Education with the Free Birth Society.

And my passion and mission in life is to share the open secret that birth is not an inherently medical event, but a spontaneous function of biology, and that it is the pregnant woman herself who possesses inalienable authority over her birth process. I woke up to the truth about birth almost eighteen years ago, and since then, I've dedicated my

life to studying birth and supporting euphoric birth. And I've given birth myself to seven healthy babies in my home without any involvement from medical professionals at all, from conception to emergence. I like how she includes uh, conception in there. I didn't need a doctor present when I was fucking. Fucking is easy. It doesn't require a doctor. Clearly childbirth is the same. Yeah. Look, I don't need a doctor around when I'm shooting off mc gunn, So why do

I need a doctor when I accidentally shoot my son? Yeah? These wild leaps of logic are Yeah. I also if you. You weren't the guest for our episodes on Keith Ranieri in the next um cult. But if you go back to the old videos of what's her name? That that lady who was on Smallville, Alison Mac, Alison Mac talking to Keith Ranieri, and listen to the cadence of their voices and compare it to the cadence of Yolanda's voice. They all talk the same way, with the same sort

of speech patterns, and I find that very interesting. Well, okay, so to quote Hitler, yikes to quote Hitler. I mean, you know what, There's a couple of things I'll quote Hitler on in a sense of agreeing with him, and one of them is how to convince a bunch of people of something I only knew how to do it. He wasn't bad. I'm only quoting the quote that you already said from mine, CLO. But just like the power of the human voice, right, So, yeah, I hope there

are people out there. I know that we were would probably edit this out. No, it was wonderful. You cannot edit audio. You cannot edit a human voice. Um, so I hope there are enough people out there who can like detect those like Culty like and now like the just like propagandy. Yeah, that whole cadence to pick up on the bullshit that they're spewing. And listeners couldn't see, but she was doing this like almost like conductor like hand motion the entire time. That was also very flowy

and swaye and Culty, Yes, thank you so much. Um yeah, so, I mean I think, I mean, Robert, obviously you picked up on it. Like, I just hope that for the people out there who like listen to all these podcasts out there, and they can, like they can tell when people are being scary and spewing propaganda bullshit, and I hope that they understand that when I tell them to

purchase bolt cutters and uh and okay um. So later in that video, Yolanda warns against inducing labor, calling it an eviction from the womb and basically arguing that it's traumatic to the infant. She brags about taking her pregnancies well past the normal forty weeks. In Yolanda's eyes, the idea that the risk of still births rises rapidly after forty two weeks is nonsense. She states, Babies come out.

Babies always come out, so when Judith's pregnancy crept past forty two weeks, she assured herself it was fine by remembering Yolanda's words. She also sought reinforcement from her friends in the free Birthing Facebook group. Things were not fine, of course, and her baby was in fact still born. The only good news in this terrible story is that this horrific tragedy shocked Judith out of the weird little

Internet cult she'd gotten drawn into. As she told NBC, I think I brainwashed myself with the Internet, and I that's what happened. The Internet like the fact that Judith was capable of realizing this and acknowledging the bad decisions that that set her on this path should key you in on the critical fact that she's not a dumb person. She's a person who did a dumb thing with a horrible consequence, but she herself as an intelligent, capable, reasonable

human being. The Internet made her stupid. This doesn't take away from her culpability in the tragedy, and she definitely has quite a lot here, but it does highlight a critical reality. Without this massive ecosystem totally tens of thousands of people and hundreds of dedicated content creators. Judith would not have been able to convince herself to make these bad decisions. This, this just wouldn't have happened in an

age in which this, this Internet infrastructure didn't exist. The train of things that led to Judith stillbirth bears tremendous similarities to the radicalization pathway for numerous neo Nazi and white supremacist terrorists. Some dumb kid comes across a really transgressive podcast or a review of a movie they like by some YouTuber like Stefon Molineux, and that leads them to other content and eventually a more extreme communities, and after a few months or a few years, you've got

yourself a committed white supremacist. And as is the case with all these new Nazis we're dealing with, there are specific individuals to blame for creating the radicalization pathways in the free birthing community. The Internet may have made Judith stupid, but it didn't do so on its own, and the two people most responsible for the spread of the free birthing movement and it's modern deadly dimensions are Emily Seldiah and Yolanda Norris Clark. They wind up in every single

one of these stories. Take the case of Lisa, a twenty nine year old Californian who talked to The Daily Beast. Lisa had been living off the grid in an eco friendly sort of you know situation in the middle of nowhere when she found a free birthing page on Instagram. The idea immediately appealed to her, and she joined the Free Birthing Facebook group that Emily Seldia ran. Like Judith, she kept her new friends up to day with her pregnancy.

Quote been in labor for days. Thought I was in transition at PM, but now it's three am and it's intensely painful. Like I just want to lie down and for the pain to stop for a second. Saldiah reached out to her via Facebook messenger to give support. Other group members left comments like you're a legend. It will happen. Like Justine. Lisa's pregnancy went on for far too long.

Her baby was also born dead. She made a quick post to the Freebirth Societies Facebook group and people they're sympathized with her, But the important work of radicalizing other pregnant women to avoid hospitals and even midwives continued, or at least it would have if not for what happened next. And I'm going to quote from the Daily Beast again here.

A group of concerned outsiders worried the free Birthers were being reckless and set up fake sock puppet accounts to gain intrigue to the private group and monitor its members. The interlopers saw themselves as centuries keeping watch over alternative lifestyle practitioners. They believe we're putting their babies in harm. The sock puppets took screenshots of Lisa's comments and posted them in their own groups, sparking instant outcry from their followers.

Some of them marveled at why anyone would take such a risk with the pregnancy, while others blamed Seldia for luring impressionable women into a dangerous practice. Others were more vicious. The twat from the Free Birth Society needs drop kicking out of a fucking window. One person wrote, I wouldn't mind seeing this monster swinging from a light post at it. Another. So that's all the Internet that you and I know

and love, Caitlin Um. Yeah. These eruptions of death threats and outrage by anti free breathing activists came to follow every new dead baby story. When baby journey Moon died in two thousand eighteen, the weight of attention and outrage leveled against the Free Birth Society caused Emily Saldia to

close all four of her Facebook groups. And here's what she wrote in the post announcing this and oh boy, strap in for this one game, dear community, it is with a heavy heart that we officially announced the closing of our four wonderful groups here on Facebook as of November one. All members will be removed in the group's closed permanently. As many of you know, a member of our private Freebirth Society group tragically lost her baby during

the birth process earlier this year. The painful reality is that babies do sometimes die in all settings, including the hospital, and every pregnant woman was content with the possibility of death which exists for each of us. Babies just die uh.

Emily went on to complain about her own death threats, the ones that she had received from anti free birthing activists, and closed the post by announcing, in light of all this, we at Freebirth Society and are advancing our plan to move off Facebook to a safe and private membership platform m hm. Patreon. Yeah, that's actually exactly what they're doing. It's not Patreon, but that's the exactly the goal. This is a grift um. The private membership platform is not free.

It cost a hundred and eight dollars to be a member. And since her Facebook group had more than six thousand members when she closed it down, the amount of more or forty six thousand members which she closed it down, the amount of money on the line here is potentially significant. And that's not the whole of the grift it's barely the start. Emily and Yolanda run a web's free Birth Society dot com on it. You can buy a coffee table book she rises, an annual edition of The Wild Mother,

which is another thing these people call themselves for. You can also pay for a number of different cool services, Caitlin, you're gonna love hearing about this. There's the Lighthouse Leaders Group coaching series from a hundred and seventy five dollars, Birth Trauma Debrief for a hundred and fifty dollars, Radical Birthkeeper Consultation for a hundred dollars, Self Mastery coaching for a hundred and fifty dollars, an undisturbed birth education and

prep for a hundred and fifty dollars. Now, I bet you wondering what is what is Radical Birthkeeper Consultation? I am wondering that, Please tell me. So I looked into it and it turns out it's a guide for other women to start their own business in the radical birthwork field. Cool Is there a market for that? Well? Because these ladies are making bank and Yolanda make it. A ton

who wouldn't want to make money off of this? It's like making a money as a midwife, but with all all of that pass key training and apprenticeship and learning useful medical ship. Oh good god. Here's a quote from the the page for that that thing new to birthwork, not sure where to start, or maybe you've been attending births for a while and you're feeling sick. If you're called to Radical Birthwork, identified by us as Standing within four Women, we are here to help you brainstorm business

ideas and dive into all things birthwork. We have effectively coached many women who want to launch their birth businesses but don't know where to start or feel stymied by the pressures that they perceive from general social climate around birth or worry as to what and how to charge

for their services. During the session, we will help you cut through the noise of self judgment and help you clarify your birthwork superpower and project your vision to the world, implement your passion and translate it into working with women with the highest integrity. This is a sixty minute session that will be done over FaceTime or zoom. Okay, so

let me let me understand this. So they are basically they offer this service where you can consult with someone to learn how to be a person who will be present at free births, just to like help out in case anything goes wrong. So they acknowledge the need for people to be there, just people with actual medical medical training. Yeah, oh wow, Okay, this is kind of where I start to see it as like I don't think like Justine obviously, the one we've talked to the most, like there was

no grift for her. She just thought this was the best thing to do um and she was wrong. But these women, Yolanda Emily Seldiah and Yolanda Norris clark Um, these are people who just want the respect and money that a real professional like a midwife or a doctor receives as a result of what they do, but they don't want to take any training or get any kind of license or be told by anyone that whatever crazy

ideas they have about birth are aren't like right. So they've just built up this community where they're treated like real medical professionals and essentially train other people and how to give birth without actually knowing how to train other people how to help give birth with no train like train people to not be trained. Yeah, it's mind boggling.

It's incredible. And if you decide, Caitlin, that you want comprehensive coaching and how to free birth your own baby, Emily and Yolanda will be more than happy to help you. For a price. Their full coaching package is a bargain at just eight Oh yeah, well, I have decided that I want their help, so I'm going to start saving up. Midwives have to go to a place. Just give it

on Skype baby, that's the way easier. Now. I can't say for certain that Lisa, one of the mothers whose baby died, was actively paying Yolanda and Emily for birth coaching, but the fact that she's mentioned getting Facebook messages from Saldia makes me think that she was uh and the precise wording of how the Daily Beasts discussed this as suspicious to me. Quote Saldaia says she provided no advice to Lisa and never even spoke to her on the

phone doesn't mean she didn't. Different medium Maybe then, yeah, maybe I found Yolanda Norris Clark on Facebook and Instagram. She goes by bao house wife and sends out free birthing memes and updates to her combined twelve thousand followers. Here's one example. The idea that governments could ever have the legitimate jurisdiction to designate birthworkers or license birthwork in

any capacity should be preposterous and outrageous to everyone. The fact that it isn't, and that so many women especially have accepted and even welcomed the appropriation of midwife re by the patriarchal, false authority of the official institutions just reinforces the task that we have at hand to rewild and re authenticate our relationship to ourselves, to motherhood, to

our bodies, to our children, and to each other. Hashtag radical birthkeeper, hashtag radical birthwork, hashtag house wife, hashtag free birth, hashtag homebirth hashtag wildbirth, hashtag free birth Society, hashtag free birth Society, Radical Birthkeepers School, hashtag radical birthkeeper School, hashtag free birth Society. Okay, so these are like the turfs

of birth there, these are birth turfs. Yeah, they're like you, we were so right before you said they were like co opting certain like language in terms of like pro choice language, and then but then they've just taken it to this such this horribly harmful radical Yikes. She has her own branded means. One of them reads governments have

no business in birth. Birth belongs to women, which like, yeah, but when your baby dies because you like ignored science, Yeah, the baby has some rights too at the point at which it's coming out. Yeah. Now, the kind of this kind of language is powerfully effective to the women who wind up in these groups. Studies have been done on the freebirth and community in the US and Australia and four key things come up over and over again when women say how they found this community. And I'm quoting

from a paper commissioned by Evidence based Midwifery. So this is a midwives like organization, rejection of the medical and midwifery models of birth, faith in the birth process, autonomy, and agency. There was a prevailing sense of choosing to freebirth in order to retain choice, control, and autonomy over their bodies during the birth process. It's about control. Another analysis I found on the conversation backs up this interpretation quote.

Where home birth services were available, some women did not want the routine care that is provided by midwives. This was largely due to the belief that routine care practices would cause interference that would get in the way of their ability to birth safe. Additionally, they were concerned that they may face coercion should they decline aspects of care provided by the midwives. Therefore, they did not want care

imposed upon them during childbirth. The researchers findings across all studies agreed that women ought to retain full control and autonomy throughout their experience of giving birth and need they felt maternity services were unable to meet. Yeah, because you can. You don't. You can't. It's not you don't own the baby. Once it's coming out, it's not your property, a thing. It's like it's leaving, it's it's it's getting on out

of there. Yeah. Oh gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just you hate you hate to see it where they're like, they're like, yes, women's autonomy and agency and like, these are things I so strongly agree with, and they're but they're they've just taken into this horrible, horrible place. They really do it rules Like I don't enjoy getting a pap smeir, but I'm not going to do it to myself because I don't fucking know how. Yeah, I have given myself a pap smeir, but I don't know what

a pap smear is. So I I just kind of you know, Robert May I explained to you what a pap smear is. I think the reality of that situation, Caitlin is between me and my hammer. I'll let you look at it. I'm pretty sure I'm good at it. It's unpleasant, to say the least. I'm starting the self schmir community actually, oh, the free schmeing, free smears. A lot of people say men cannot get and give themselves

pap smears, even hammers, but my Facebook group says otherwise. Uh, Well, as long as um babies are not dying, I guess that's that's what's important here. No, no babies dying, some some people, some adults. Yeah, uh now, the sad reality is that more and more babies are going to keep dying as a result of the free birthing movement. Emily Saldaya and Yolanda Norris Clark will continue podcasting and meming and making bank while America's infant mortality rate ticks ever higher.

The NBC article that came out earlier this year helped to highlight the movement, but in the end it may just draw more women into the movement's mall. That's certainly what Emily Saldiah thinks. In the immediate wake of the NBC article, which was focused around the death of a child from someone who followed Emily's instructions to a t she posted this on Instagram. Hey guys, no podcast this week.

Decided to prioritize self care and create some spaciousness to relax and be fully present with my baby after an insane month of working my ass off on this membership launch. I'm extremely proud of what we've built and it feels so good to be off Facebook. Thank you for the outpouring of love and support I've reach received in this hard as fun past six weeks. Someday, when I'm ready, I will talk at length about my experience on this full on cyber attack, but for now it's only furthered.

By resolving this work, truth and light will always shine brighter and carry more endurance. And in the words of Lena Dunham, no one that actually knows me thinks I'm an asshole, and that's what matters. When you know and love who you are, you're unshakable. The bright side of all this weird media attention is it's brought a ton of women to this movement. So fuck yes to transmitting

people's traumatized shit energy into something powerful and exciting. Big bicep emoticon, fist emoticon, And to all the haters out here that have gotten weirdly obsessed with me, I still got all the love in my heart for you, and I will keep fighting for you, whether you're with me or not. Fire emoticon, hert emoticon, hert emoticon, hertomoticon, heart emoticon,

heart emoticon. Hashtag Free Birth Society, hashtag the Free Birth Podcast, hashtag haters Gonna Hate Strong Women hashtag smash the patriarchy, hashtag calling bullshit hashtag light winds hashtag I Am Not afraid hashtag strong as fuck hashtag Lena Dunham, You Inspire Me hashtag by by Facebook women are taking advice on their babies health care from this person. That's so scary. Also, if I like, if I if it like, if I,

I can't even speak it's amazing, it's astonishing, labbergasted. I think if I if like, if my feminism ever inspired like free birthers to be like, yeah, smash the patriarchy, I will I don't know what I will do. I will have to just like log off and never be present in the world again. Like if my message somehow gets convoluted to like this version of scary radical free

birth feminism horrifying. Yeah, yeah, you don't have to give birth in a hospital, but you do have to consult medical professionals about your birth to do so responsibly, because when you decide you're bringing a baby into the world, it's not all about you anymore. Um, But it is all about you when you're performing a home pap smear

as a man. And that's why you should join my Facebook group man Smearing, where we're teaching each other how to recapture pap smearing from the medical industrial establishment and the feminist establishment and remail and rewild pap smears for all of the men who have access to home depot hammers. I don't even know how to respond to that, cait Um, I will say this if what wouldn't it be funny if they were like m r A s out there who were like um, men should be able to get

pap smears too. And then and then they go on and buy a speculum or sorry, a hammer and hammer the male pap smear is performed with a hammer. I see, um, well, I just I just keeel good, feel great. I just keep going back to like one of the roots of the problem that off that births the free birth movement. See what I did there, Midwolf okay, um is the broken American health care system. And if we totally find a way to fix that, I feel like there would there would never be a need any any you know

mother's to feel the need to have a free birthing experience. Um. So that I mean, I mean, gosh, I feel sick. Well, if you're feeling sick, that means it's the perfect time to plug your plug doubles, because nothing cures your ailments like a solid plug. Thank you well, I'll start with Sludge and American Healthcare Story, my podcast about my experience finding out that I had gall stones and the very long and arduous process that it took from me to get surgery to get them taken out. So check out

that and it's amazing. Thank you so much, Sophie. I keep um saying, yeah, I'm releasing season two soon and I don't know when that's going to happen, but it'll happen someday. But season two focuses on other people's medical nightmare stories. So fans and medical nightmares. Yeah, I mean I want, I will sure, Yeah, I'll have anyone on if anyone has a medical that's the other thing. If people have medical horror stories, UM, please email them to

me at Sludge Story podcast at gmail dot com. Um, I'll probably feature them on the podcast again when I start releasing episodes someday. Um. Yeah, I just I want to have faith in a health care system. Um, it just needs to be very much revamped. So um yeah, let's work on that society anyway. Um. You can listen to my less of a bummer podcast, The Bechtel Cast, which is also still kind of a bummer sometimes because

it's all about how, um, most movies are horrible to women. UM, so you know sometimes they're not, though, and those episodes are nice. Um. And then you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin durante um and uh yeah, I think that's that's about it. And you can find me on the internet at man schmearing dot com and the man Smearing Facebook group where we talk about how to reclaim our wherever you do that from doctors and the them an atriarchy. Um. That's that's at the end

of the episode. So what Robert meant to say is he's at I Ride Okay on Twitter or at Bastard Spot on Twitter. On Instagram, we have a te public store. Robert also hosts Worst You're Ever. Uh I have Twitter, yes, so like your Twitter. I've actually never I've actually never said it out loud. It's why Underscore, Sophie Underscore, Why Anderson Content. That's it, okay, So why Sophie, I why okay?

And then because you're a professional, okay, So follow Sophie Ray Lectorman at on Twitter at why Underscore, Sophie Underscore Why and then he features Anderson content. I thought the whole handle for a second. Was that professional like you, I'm a hack in a fraud. That episode