Introduction: Humanising Birth: Past, present and future

In this chapter we identify the need for this book at this time, and outline the structure and chapter content. Firstly, we describe the current ‘crisis’ of maternity care around the world, with escalating evidence of abuse, lack of autonomy and trauma as a result of birth care. We position this in relation to the history of the medicalisation of birth—which at the time was not about safety but about medical expansion—and the marginalisation of midwifery. However, rather than staying in this binaried tug-of-war, we call for us all to embark on the quest of humanising birth together—gathering all of what we now know, and discovering that which we do not yet know, to centre the birthing person and honour the transformational process of birth in a way that can unite us all. Humanising birth is the first step towards humanising society—it is a call for connection, compassion and care and to rediscover our collective meaning in a world that seems to have lost its way.