Argentine midwives bare breasts for home birth

 

Argentine midwives and activists staged an unusual protest picketing topless in front of the health ministry to demand the right to give birth at home.

Around 20 protesters bared their brightly painted breasts along a busy Buenos Aires street and held up signs urging Health Minister Daniel Gollan to protect the "right to choose where and how to give birth."

Argentina's midwives say they have been excluded from policymakers' discussions on new regulations for their profession, which they fear will limit their activities and ban home births.

"I gave birth at a home," said a message painted on the back of a beaming Eugenia Gimenez, 29, who nursed her four-month-old baby as she walked the picket line.

Doctor Ana Paula Fagioli, who backed the protest, said hospitals have "become torture chambers for pregnant women who spend hours connected to tubes and under medication to induce birth."

The ministry said it was working on regulations that would allow home births to continue in safe conditions.