As a midwife and educator, Alison Teate believes women should be able to control where and how they give birth.
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But all too often that's not the case.
Dr Teate, who is also the chair of the ACT branch of the Australian College of Midwives, has been disappointed by the restrictive nature of the ACT's publicly funded home birthing trial.
"For some women, they have chosen to free birth because they have not been able to access the care that they want," she said.
"For other women it's just not having their choices and wishes respected.
"They feel like the system promises them one thing, but then denies it on the other hand."
The Greens will on Thursday call on the government to make improvements to ACT's public home birthing scheme.
ACT Greens health spokesman Shane Rattenbury said the party wanted to see the eligibility criteria of the home birth trial relaxed to allow more healthy mothers to birth at home.
The stance comes after the midwives running the ACT's home birth program said too many women were missing out due to unnecessary restrictions.
Under the terms of ACT's trial, women who want water births are not eligible for the program, nor are first-time mothers.
Mothers must also live within a 15-minute drive of Canberra Hospital to be eligible for the program.
"The ACT Greens have also been raising this issue with respective ACT Health Ministers over many years, and included its reintroduction as an item in the 2008 Parliamentary Agreement," Mr Rattenbury said.
“It’s especially disappointing that despite these efforts, the current home birthing program is far too restrictive—a concern that the Greens have raised on a number of occasions since the program was reintroduced as a trial in 2016.
“The current program does not allow healthy first-time mothers who have had no complications to
even enrol, let alone mothers who live more than 20 minutes from the hospital catchment.
“It’s no surprise that many Canberra women are simply not aware that the home birthing option
even exists.
"On the other hand, some mothers who would like to birth at home but are ineligible for the program choose to birth at home – with less support, which may be less safe."
Dr Teate said she wanted ACT Health to make a firm commitment to providing a publicly funded home birth model where women have access to the same options of care in their home as in the birth centres.
A spokeswoman for Canberra Health Services has said are no plans to change the eligibility criteria until the final evaluation of the trial is complete.
"The final evaluation will provide recommendations for publicly funded homebirth in the ACT. At this stage we can’t predict what these will be," the spokeswoman said.
