Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s rumoured decision to have a home birth, and not arrange an immediate public photoshoot with the baby, has caused a furore, but for the wrong reasons.
Most of the focus has been on the “arrogance” of the couple – really meaning Meghan – for requesting some privacy before they pose with the baby. A prevailing attitude is that the public funds the royals and therefore has a “right” to photos. How creepy. All babies, even royal ones, “belong” only to their parents and in this respect Meghan and Harry owe the public zilch. Yet, how typical all this is – a huge row over froth and nonsense. Surely the far bigger issue is whether Meghan and Harry’s decision is going to popularise home births, but without driving home the risks and the need to plan meticulously.
There are many reasons why women opt for home births, but pray God that it’s never because they have been made fashionable, by Markle or anyone else. She won’t be having a regular home birth – Frogmore, the couple’s home, would be heaving with qualified staff and, in the event of a complication, mother and child would be whisked to hospital under police escort. Ordinary women are allocated one midwife and if things go wrong (fatigue, distressed baby, need for an epidural/caesarean, post-birth complications or worse), they’d need to go to hospital as quickly as they could, however they could. So it would be very much a budget version of a royal home birth.
Women need to ask themselves: is this what I want? Some women would still say yes and for many good reasons. Still, there could be others, possibly young or first-timers, who might be swayed by the idea of home birth because some rich, famous or otherwise privileged people have made it look straightforward and chic. Not that such irresponsibility is restricted to home births – the labour ward selfie has become a thing. However, at least these women are in hospital – they’re not splashing about in a birthing pool on the shag-pile rug, surrounded by Jo Malone candles, pretending that giving birth is as easy as shelling pistachios.
While home birth is sometimes promoted as rejecting the medicalised patriarchy and revering female strength, all too often it seems quite the opposite – a diminishing of the serious, bloody, potentially dangerous business of childbirth, turning it into something where all a gal needs is a lukewarm paddling pool and Enya on Spotify to get by. For some women, that’s true, for others, it isn’t – the point is, you don’t know which kind you are until you get there.
When someone as high profile as Markle opts for home birth, it should be made clear that it’s crucial to understand the risks and prepare for complications. Otherwise, less privileged (and less protected) women might be done a disservice.
Stormzy takes one for the team in his fight against racism
Bravo, Stormzy, for responding decisively to the racism he says was meted out to his team. The grime artist pulled out of headlining the Snowbombing festival in Austria after his manager and other friends were accused, by festival security, of being armed, then manhandled and treated with disrespect, despite not resembling those rumoured to be carrying weapons. (A festival spokesperson says Stormzy’s team was searched “in accordance with protocol”.)
Stormzy accused them of racial profiling and pulled out of the event just hours before being due to go on stage. Apologising profusely to fans who’d travelled to see him, he said: “If these are the drastic steps that I need to take to make a point against racism and racial profiling, then trust me I’m taking [them].”
What a brave move and, in the circumstances, perhaps the only one that really works. How else do you make a stand against racism, in entertainment or any other mega-bucks, high-stakes industry, unless you kick perpetrators where it really hurts (straight in the wallet)?
This incident also demonstrates that Stormzy remains hyper-alert and proactive about racism. Of course he does – he’s a black man and has spoken before about how, even now, he gets stopped for driving a nice car. However, there’s still a difference between Stormzy, a celebrated black man, and other black people, like his friends, who don’t have the insulation of fame to protect them from the worst and most blatant examples of racism.
Of the myriad things celebrity does to a soul, it also shields and blinkers – people treat you so nicely, you could almost be pampered into a state of complacency. But this hasn’t happened to Stormzy. It would have been magnificent if he had withdrawn from a festival because he’d personally suffered from racism. Doing so on behalf of his team is a whole new level of fightback.
Brunei’s ‘clarification’ on sharia law is of little comfort
It turns out that Brunei’s introduction of sharia law, including the stoning to death of homosexuals, is “no biggie”. Following international uproar (well done everyone, including Elton John and George Clooney), the Bruneian foreign ministry has responded by saying that it’s more about “prevention” and “education” than punishment.
So that’s all right then. Moreover, such punishments would require evidence and to be approved by at least two men of “high moral standing and piety”. And where would they find men who think of themselves in those terms in Brunei?
As if this weren’t reassurance enough, up pops our foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to say he’s had a nice natter with Brunei’s foreign minister, who told him that prosecutions of this kind would be “unlikely”. Well, so long as it’s merely “unlikely” that people are stoned to death, that’s fine. Except it isn’t, is it?
What is this – a weird diplomatic “pinkie promise”, which means precisely nothing? What if sharia hardliners in Brunei, emboldened by actual laws, decide that, after all, they do want to stone gay people to death? Hunt must surely realise that this can’t be his final exchange with oil-rich Brunei on this matter.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
