After Ternovszky v. Hungary

Following the European Court of Human Right's decision in Ternovszky vs Hungary in 14 December 2010, Hungary passed legislation that legalized home birth starting in 2011. Midwives have been granted licenses, but believe their work is overregulated.18 

Quantitative data on maternity care prior to Ternovszky v. Hungary is conflicting.19 and it is additionally difficult to measure the impact of the legalization of home birth given the newness and overregulating nature of the law and lack of statistics. Rubashkin et al.’s study nonetheless indicates a dissatisfaction among individuals surveyed who recently gave birth in Hungary. Notably the most common complaints regarded the individual‘s loss of autonomy and unnecessary interventions such as an episiotomy.20 Allowing for home births is but a piece of what is needed to fix the maternity system in Hungary: it is essential to question and subvert obstetrics and medicalized birth, just as Agnes Geréb did for her patients. 

18 Katalin Fábián, “Overcoming Disempowerment: The Home-Birth Movement in Hungary,” in Beyond NGO-ization:The Development of Social Movements in Central and Eastern Europe (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Group, 2013), 71-72. ProQuest Ebook Central. 

19 Nicholas Rubashkin et al. “Assessing Quality of Maternity Care in Hungary: Expert Validation and Testing of the Mother-Centered Prenatal Care (MCPC) Survey Instrument,” Reproductive Health, no. 14 (November 16, 2017): 2, doi:10.1186/s12978-017-0413-3. 

20 Nicholas Rubashkin et al. “Assessing Quality of Maternity Care in Hungary: Expert Validation and Testing of the Mother-Centered Prenatal Care (MCPC) Survey Instrument,” Reproductive Health, no. 14 (November 16, 2017): 8, doi:10.1186/s12978-017-0413-3.