Exposed: the business linked to baby deaths across the world – The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:12They were putting out misleading, false and sometimes quite dangerous information around pregnancy and birth. It's not true what the medical system, what your medical midwives are all saying, that this amount of litres of blood loss is hemorrhage. Really nothing could prepare us for the amount of harm that we would discover that was linked to the organisation. We speak to one of the reporters behind the Guardian's investigation into the free birth society and how it radicalised pregnant women around the world. From the Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hopp.

0:50With me is Lucy Osborne, Guardian special correspondent. one of the two investigative reporters who's been looking into the Free Birth Society for more than a year now with your colleague Shirin Carlo. So Lucy thanks so much for being with us and thank you for your reporting the print piece of which came out last month but we've also got a six-part podcast series called The Birth Keepers which was also landed this week too. Talk me through how you and Shirin first came across this story. So Shirin Carlo is my reporting partner we were both pregnant around the same time in 2022. And we were just really concerned about the amount of misinformation that we were finding on social media around pregnancy and birth.

1:31And so we thought it was really important to look into it and sort of find out which of these accounts we should be looking at and the extent to which this information was having an impact on women. So we started by monitoring the Free Birth Society more closely and listening to more of their content and discovered that so much of this, A lot of the information that we were finding was that they were putting out misleading, false and sometimes quite dangerous information around pregnancy and birth. And so we started to suspect that there may be cases of real world harm connected to this. This is an organization with a huge international following.

2:05And so we set out to try and find out how many women were impacted by this information. But really nothing could prepare us for the amount of harm that we would discover that was linked to the organization. Yeah, and we'll come to what you uncovered in a moment. But I think it might be worth just flagging what a free birth is, because it's not the same as a home birth, nor is a home birth with a doula or a medical midwife, is it? It's something more radical, more extreme than that. Yes, exactly. Yes. I think a lot of people get it mixed up with home birth, which is giving birth at home with a midwife or a medical professional present.

2:44free birth is giving birth on your own with no medical providers present and the free birth society advocate for an even even more extreme version of free birth so they also advocate that there's no ultrasounds no blood tests no urine tests no prenatal care at all and this term wild pregnancy which was in your reporting about not having contact with the medical system in any way through your through your pregnancy yeah that's right so also for this investigation we spoke to other free birth advocates and a lot of them also feel that free birth society have given a much more extreme version of it.

3:20So some of those are the cases of that most people would recognize as life-threatening emergencies like postpartum hemorrhage and gestational diabetes, preeclampsia. They claim that they're usually nothing to worry about. They also tell women that not even to prepare for the possibility of going to hospital. So these women are going into free births without any sort of backup plan as to you know if something does go wrong what to do about it. So I worked with you and Sheeran on an early part of this investigation while we were recording and speaking to women who'd been impacted by this and I was so struck by the care that you both had taken in you know really trying to understand the validity of this as a choice that this is not an investigation into the right or wrong nature of free birth that every woman as you say in the podcast series is entitled to make the decisions about the own birth that they feel is right for them but but what's important at this is that the information is factual um and and that you found tragically was not the case tell me what it was like as the story unfolded as you reported speaking to women in the u.s and beyond yeah shireen and i um have been really clear throughout this investigation that uh women should be free to give birth however they they choose to give birth so whether that's c-section free birth home birth what we were so shocked by was that women are making often making choices around birth that aren't based on informed decisions based on accurate information and that's what we were finding that a lot of these women that were coming across the free birth society they weren't necessarily they didn't even know what free birth was a lot of them when they found it they were planning hospital births or home births even and had you know weren't planning this kind of birth and crucial to this is social media algorithms isn't it and I know that you and Shirin were both tracking what might happen to a woman and what did happen to the women that you spoke to in terms of perhaps looking at hypnobirthing might lead you to things that are far more extreme but that look very aesthetically pleasing when you encounter them on Instagram.

5:21Yeah exactly like so many of the women that we spoke to were looking at much more mainstream content online and then came across the Free Birth Society and I think like one thing that most women probably feel when they're particularly pregnant for the first time is you know you're we're so used to hearing these terrifying stories of birth and how painful and awful it is and so the first thing people usually recommend you to do is is to look up positive birth stories and free birth society the instagram which is how most people find it is is largely this sort of collection of of amazing inspiring birth stories um so that's the sort of entry point and and initially the free birth society it looks like a lot of other natural birth accounts it's very very slick marketing campaign and Emily Saldea and Yolanda Norris Clark look you know they come across as very experienced very trustworthy.

6:11Emily Saldea being the founder of the Free Birth Society and Yolanda Norris Clark is her Canadian business partner. The other thing that the Free Birth Society really kind of capitalise on is very valid concerns that women have about the medicalised birth system. I know it's something again that you and Shiren were had been looking into here in the UK in NHS hospitals, but a problem that is perhaps even more acute in America and that those experiences of medical trauma, be it in birth or otherwise, is a large reason why women were drawn to the authentic, natural free birth experience that the FBS was selling.

6:49Probably every single woman that we spoke to, and we spoke to, I think, more than 50 women who were influenced by FBS, found it because of some previous experience with the medical system whether it was a traumatic birth or a traumatic experience in hospital and yeah and in the UK you know we've recently had the the birth trauma inquiry where hundreds of women described these very traumatic births and more and more women are reporting this kind of treatment in hospitals so of course you know people are looking for alternatives and for most people that that may be a sort of more natural way of giving birth but in these cases it you know went to more of an extreme where they were giving birth without any involvement at all from the hospitals.

7:33But as your investigation has found the Free Birth Society made a great deal of money how did it monetize its offerings? Yeah so the Free Birth Society started off as a just a Facebook group and a podcast and it's now this multi-million dollar business empire uh they have a series of courses uh they have the very popular uh complete guide to free birth which is a video course and that's made itself made more than five million dollars um already the radical birth keeper school was the first one i think that's been running since 2020 and they've made more than four million from the rbk school and their more recent uh offering um so they've really grown into this global business um and found a way of monetizing something that is by definition free.

8:19So you mentioned at the beginning that when you and Shuren first learned of this story you had no idea of the scale of what you were going to uncover the scale tragically of infant death as a result of that can be directly linked to FBS teachings. So we discovered we did discover 48 cases where women or their birth keepers appear to have been linked to FBS. So most of those cases were stillbirths or neonatal deaths, but also cases of maternal harm. So within that, we found 18 cases of women who either lost babies or were harmed themselves, who appear to have been significantly influenced by FBS, which led to potentially avoidable tragedies.

9:03So you've put your reporting to Yolanda Norris-Clark and Emily Saldea from the Free Birth Society. How did they respond to the allegations? So neither Emily Saldea or Yolanda Norris Clark have provided any kind of substantive response but in response to one of our emails Emily Saldea said that some of the allegations that we made were false or defamatory and she's also said she's put a post on her Instagram describing the coverage in the Guardian as mainstream news propaganda describing some of the allegations as lies. Yolanda Norris Clark didn't respond at all but she's previously responded to other criticism in other coverage she's described her critics as pathetic losers and said that FBS is the most ethical business you can run.

9:51Yeah and we should say that Norris Clark says it's unfair to hold her responsible for the choices of a mother influenced by her content. In May FBS released a disclaimer saying its content was not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition related to pregnancy or birth. How's it been for you now that the story is out and now that the six-part investigative series is now live for audiences? It was a really harrowing experience reporting on this you know these women have been so brave it sounds like a cliche but you know they really have been I think to talk about losing a baby or having you know it's a very very intimate very private things that they're describing and they still feel a lot of shame and guilt often about what happens and I think hearing this in their own words they're very good at describing the extent of the hold that this organisation had on them.

10:46I think it can be really hard to explain how essentially a social media business can have so much influence on you but I think you really hear that in their own words. Well, Lucy, it is a phenomenal piece of work and the six-part series is an astonishing and harrowing lesson. So congratulations to you and Shirin and thank you for your work. Thank you so much. That's it for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus, which will be in your feed every weekday night about what you need to know about the story everyone's talking about in around 10 minutes.

11:21And do listen to Lucy and Shirin's astonishing investigation, and their six-part investigative series, The Birth Keepers, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. The senior producer was Ryan Rem Gobin and the lead producer was Zoe Hitch. We'll be back on Monday.

11:44This is The Guardian.