On the third day of being in labour with my first child, I entered a new state of being. It was time to dig deep. This is what I had learned in all the childbirth classes. As long as I remained calm, breathed as instructed, moaned through the pain, things would happen as they were meant to. My body knew what it was doing. Only, it didn’t.

On the fourth day, I started to beg. This wasn’t right. Despite contraction after relentless contraction, I wasn’t dilating. I hadn’t slept, I couldn’t even sit down. I needed help. And still, they waited. For what, I never understood.

When Yvette Cooper told the Guardian this week that women must not “feel pressurised” to have “an ideal birth experience”, it was a relief to hear her name this all-too-common phenomenon in which maternity staff are reluctant – or refusing – to escalate. But Cooper’s characterisation of the problem is not the full picture. The harm here is not just in women being nudged towards a certain kind of birth experience, but in a culture that can completely override women’s physical and psychological safety in favour of a low-intervention ideal.

Half of Britain’s maternal deaths are considered preventable, and low-intervention births are the ideal for a reason. Midwife-led care usually results in better outcomes for healthy women with straightforward pregnancies – lower risk of infection and severe bleeds, and quicker recovery. In 2024-25, 45% of all hospital deliveries in England (542,235 total births) were performed via caesarean section – it was the first........

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