Advocacy

This letter (PDF download here) was written to the Wisconsin Midwifery Advisory Committee on July 4, 2025. At this time, access to breech, twins, and VBAC is under threat in Wisconsin with proposals to remove those items, plus rural births, from midwives' scope of practice. You are welcome to borrow from this letter as you advocate for breech options in your own community.

If this happens, most WI families with these pregnancies would be forced into either unassisted birth or mandatory (and illegal) C-sections. (While VBAC access is not as scarce, very few hospitals support vaginal breech or vaginal twins, particularly if one or both twins is breech.) There are NO Wisconsin hospitals that have a 24/7 breech service, and there are only a few isolated physicians who support this option in a hospital setting, but women have to live in their catchment radius and women have to go into labor when they are on call.

In August 2016, Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Los Angeles banned vaginal breech birth. This is, unfortunately, a common scenario in American hospitals. Dr. Rixa Freeze wrote this letter encouraging GAMC to reverse the ban.

You are welcome to borrow from this letter as you advocate for breech options in your own community. 

Before sending the letter, Dr. Freeze spoke with Glendale's maternity department. "I phoned Glendale's Maternity Services today, and they said that the decision came from the governing board of the hospital, not from their own department. In other words, the ban came from hospital administrators, not from the people who are actually caring for pregnant women."

In response to this breech ban, the Los Angeles community organized a "Rally Against Vaginal Breech Birth Ban" on Sep 7th. 

If you are being forced to have a cesarean section due to breech presentation, consider requesting that your hospital sign this "Consent for forced cesarean section." This consent form was developed by Dr. Stuart Fischbein, a physician who attends breeches, twins, and VBACS in the Los Angeles area. 

If you are given no choice but a cesarean section for your breech baby, that is not truly consent. It is coercion. It is also against the law in most countries. In this situation, you should demand that your provider sign this consent form acknowledging that you are being forced into the surgery. 

Your hospital will likely refuse to sign the form. In response, you can initiate a conversation about why it is not ethical or legal to force you to consent to an unwanted surgery.