Empowered Through Intimacy: Understanding the Czech Homebirth Controversy

Czech home birth rate is average compared with that of other European countries, as are perinatal mortality rates. However, while European discourse on birth-related interventions has spurred support of alternative settings, attempts to make home birth illegal in the Czech Republic have multiplied, and the debate over where to give birth has been elevated to a controversy that presents home birth as a threat to the newborn’s life and act of maternal irresponsibility, rather than an expression of personal freedom or an empowerment strategy. In a nutshell, the choice over where to give birth is seen as a choice managed by the obstetricians and the stakeholders who are preparing the legislation. This, in turn, reveals the conflict over mothers’ empowerment in deciding where to deliver, nurtured by the professional territorial conflict between obstetrics and midwifery. The project analyzes arguments in the homebirth debate and identifies its main actors in order to suggest that, first, the particular choice for where to deliver is legitimized in the public debate through ‘intimacy’. Albeit commonly thought of in the context of sexual relationships, intimacy relates here to the concern about the appropriateness of a particular emotional experience for the public debate. The analysis shows how intimacy becomes a set of knowledge informing the particular choice of giving birth. Second, the analysis investigates by whom the choice is seen as relevant, and by whom not, in order to trace how intimacy affects the argumentation concerning home birth.