Why Women Keep Choosing Free Birth: The Maternal Care Crisis & Spiritual Warfare | Moyock, NC Birth Keeper
- sydneyhagan818
- Sep 26
- 7 min read
The Undeniable Maternal Care Crisis
The United States is in the throes of a maternal care crisis. This isn’t just rhetoric, it’s reality. We are the most dangerous place in the Global North to give birth. Maternal and infant mortality rates continue to rise, even as (or, especially as, I should say) medical interventions multiply. One might assume that with all our hospitals, technology, and “advancements,” outcomes would be improving. Yet the opposite is true. With every new protocol, every new intervention, every new pill or injection, the health of mothers and babies deteriorates. This should stop us in our tracks. But it doesn’t. Why? Because the truth is too disruptive. The reality is that this is not just a medical crisis. It is a spiritual one. After all, if the enemy seeks to destroy God’s people, where better to begin than at the very foundation: in the womb, in birth, in the sacred bond between mother and child?
God’s Perfect Design, Interrupted
Birth was never meant to be orchestrated by man. God, in His infinite wisdom, wrote into a woman’s body the most miraculous choreography: hormones that bring forth life, sustain her strength, and flood her brain with love as she meets her child. Oxytocin, the “love hormone,” flows at its peak during undisturbed labor and birth. It bonds mother and baby. It calms; it heals; it roots the family unit. And that's only part of its inherently wise function. Yet nearly every woman in America is robbed of its design. Synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin) is administered to almost every single laboring mother in hospitals, either to start labor, speed it up, or “manage” the delivery of the placenta or to stop or "prevent" hemorrhage. Add to that routine epidurals, inductions for convenience, continuous monitoring, cesareans at epidemic levels, and you have a generation of mothers whose God-given physiology was never allowed to unfold.
The results are devastating:
Rising rates of postpartum depression and anxiety.
Disrupted bonding and attachment struggles.
Birth trauma carried silently for years.
Families fractured at their very beginning.
This is more than bad medicine. It is an assault on women, babies, the mother-baby dyad, and, by extension, families.
When Birth Without Interference Sounds Impossible
The cultural blindness to physiologic birth runs so deep that some people don’t even know it exists.
A student midwife friend of mine told me about a conversation she had at a coffee shop with a young woman preparing to become a labor and delivery nurse.
The woman asked, with genuine curiosity, “So… are epidurals done in home births?”
My friend smiled and said, “Well, no... and that’s kind of the point.”
To which the future nurse responded in shock: “Oh wow, I didn’t even know you could have a baby without an epidural.”
This exchange may sound laughable, but it’s actually deeply disturbing and heartbreaking. An entire generation has been so thoroughly conditioned to see intervention as inseparable from birth that the thought of a baby being born without anesthesia feels radical. Yet, for thousands of years, this was the way of all women.
The Medical System’s War on Birth
How did we get here? We must first remember the history: For centuries, women birthed with women. Midwives served families with hands that were skilled, gentle, faithful, and with wisdom passed down for generations prior. Birth was understood as sacred, powerful, and physiologic. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, male physicians began a campaign against midwives. They painted them as dirty, dangerous, and outdated. They framed obstetrics as the “safe” and “modern” alternative.
And they won.
The truth is, since obstetricians took control of birth, outcomes have worsened, not improved. The U.S. spends more on maternal care than almost any other nation, yet we see some of the worst results. The system is built not on reverence for God’s design, but on fear, control, and profit.
When Regulation Becomes Restriction
Even for women who seek out midwifery care, regulation has created another problem. Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs), though often skilled and well-intentioned, are largely trained in hospital-based, intervention-heavy models. Their scope is tethered to medical institutions. Many Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs), though serving in homes and birth centers, are bound by restrictive protocols that often mimic the very system women are trying to avoid. Regulation has shackled midwives to practice in ways that prioritize liability over physiology, policy over presence, and fear over faith. This is why so many women turn to traditional or underground midwives: those free from state-imposed chains, those who carry wisdom handed down through generations, those who honor birth as sacred. These midwives are not reckless. They know when to step in, but their priority is always to protect God’s design first.
The Other Extreme: No Intervention Ever
There is another side of the coin worth mentioning, though. In response to medical abuse, some women have embraced an ideology that declares: “No intervention, ever.” This is alluring to those burned by the system. It promises freedom; and it promises autonomy. But it quietly shifts faith away from God and onto the self. It glorifies women’s bodies apart from the One who designed them. And here lies the danger: both extremes, medicalized birth and absolute rejection of any help. They both miss the mark.
One replaces God with science; the other replaces God with self.
Both are born of fear, pride, and mistrust. Scripture gives us the middle way: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5–6). Birth is not meant to be controlled by man, nor idolized by woman. It is meant to be surrendered to God.
I want to be clear: I am not condemning free birth. Every woman has the God-given right to decide how and where she births her baby. Many, many women go on to have incredible and successful free births, myself included. The key is not whether you choose free birth, midwifery care, or even a hospital setting. The key is whether you are listening to your God-given intuition, educating yourself, and taking responsibility for your decisions.
Where the danger lies is in the mindset that says “absolutely no intervention, ever.” That ideology ignores the reality that sometimes, though rarely, wise intervention may support a better birth outcome. To deny that possibility entirely is not balance, it is pride. We need the healthy balance: trusting God’s design, protecting physiologic birth, and being prepared for potential needs that may arise. And we need to know that balance whether we are hiring a birth attendant, working with a midwife, or birthing without one.
At the end of the day, we are our own greatest care providers. Passing on the responsibility of our births, whether to a doctor, a midwife, or even to a self-serving ideology, is inherently irresponsible. We hold the responsibility before God. When we hire help, we are not handing over authority; we are inviting support. Even if we attempt to pass off responsibility, it still ultimately rests with us. This is what it means to truly reclaim birth. Not outsourcing it, not idolizing autonomy, but walking in wisdom, faith, and accountability before the Lord.
Birth as a Battlefield
This is why birth matters. This is why the maternal health crisis cannot be ignored. Birth is not simply a medical event, it is the spiritual threshold where life enters the world. Where families are knit together. Where mothers are transformed.
If you corrupt birth, you weaken the family. If you weaken the family, you destabilize society. And if you destabilize society, you leave God’s people vulnerable.
The enemy knows this. Which is why the battle begins not just at birth, but at conception (which is a topic for another day).
A Call to Mothers, Families, and the Church
We must wake up. We must name this crisis for what it is: spiritual warfare. We cannot continue to blindly accept routine interventions as “normal.” We cannot submit to regulatory systems that choke midwives into practicing like doctors. And we cannot fall into the trap of idolizing autonomy, refusing any wise and timely help. The path forward is not fear, control, or pride. The path forward is faith. Faith in God’s design for birth. Faith that He equips women to bring forth life. Faith that He provides wisdom, discernment, and community to walk with us in those sacred hours.
This is the maternal care reform we desperately need: not more machines, not more rules, not more pride. But a return to God’s way.
Closing Reflection
Mothers, you were designed for this. Babies were designed for this. Families were designed to be born in love, not fear. The crisis before us is not just medical, it is spiritual... and we are losing! And if we truly desire to strengthen families, protect mothers, and honor life, we must start at the beginning.
Birth is holy ground. And it’s time we treated it that way.
Stay Connected
Thank you for reading and walking with me on this journey of reclaiming sacred, undisturbed birth.
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With fierce faith and gentle hands,
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