FREEDOM FOR BIRTH - 1,000 SIMULTANEOUS GLOBAL PREMIERE SCREENINGS ON THURS 20th SEPT 2012

Thursday 20th September 2012 will give birth to over 1,000 premiere screenings of the new 60 minute documentary FREEDOM FOR BIRTH happening in over 50 countries in 17 different languages. From screenings at the Cambridge Film Festival to the Royal College of Midwives in London, from the Motherhood Museum in New York to Yale University - the 1,000 screenings are being hosted by international experts, Human Rights lawyers, academics, doctors, authors, campaigners and ordinary parents. Freedom for Birth is a new 60 minute campaigning film that re-frames Human Rights as the most pressing issue in childbirth today. In many countries around the world, women are being denied the most basic human right of autonomy over their own bodies. They cannot choose how and where to give birth. Those that persist in their desire to have a normal, physiological birth are sometimes forced by judges to surrender to surgery or threatened with having their babies taken away by child welfare services. In many countries, if a woman wants to have a home birth supported by a midwife, those midwives face criminal prosecution. Some midwives, like Ágnes Geréb in Hungary, are even imprisoned. Freedom for Birth calls for radical reform to the world’s maternity systems so that these Human Rights violations stop and women are afforded real choice as to how and where they give birth.