Agnes Geréb
An experienced obstetrician and midwife, Agnes Geréb is the face of the home birth movement in Hungary. Geréb worked as an obstetrician at the Albert Szent-Györgyi Clinical Center, at the University of Szeged in Szeged in southern Hungary for 17 years until 1994. Hungarian law at the time required births to take place in a hospital with the assistance of a doctor. Geréb realized the procedures praised by obstetricians – the supine position, use of drugs during labor – resulted in complications during birth. She additionally recognized the highly medicalized nature of birth which caused the birthing experience to not be a positive, empowering experience for the individual giving birth. Geréb began attending the births of her clients in their homes and organized the first conference on home birth in Szeged, Hungary, in May 1992.9 She helped to establish an NGO, Alternatal, focused on pro-woman birth practices and set up a birthing center with funding from clients of midwives. 10 Geréb developed a following of colleagues in Western Europe and North America and clients:
Mirtill Rackevei gave birth to her three daughters at home between 2002 and 2006, with Geréb’s help. “I decided to have home births because I had seen my sister have a child in hospital and it was awful,” she said. “My sister was reluctant to have any more children because of her traumatic experience but my home births were so lovely that she decided to try it,” she added. “The difference for her was so great that she went on to have third and fourth children, also at home. So now she has three children in the world who would not exist were it not for Agi. Agi is a wonderful woman."11
Geréb estimates she helped to deliver 5,500 babies throughout her 17 years working at the clinic. And, despite being an unlicensed independent midwife since 2005, she attended to around 3,500 home births from 1990 to 2010.
On 5 October 2010, Geréb was arrested following an emergency delivery at her birth center. A 500 person protest arose outside of the prison the following day.12 A human chain of 2,000 people (including women and babies) from the municipal court to the national parliament emerged on the day of Geréb's trial, “intended to represent the connection between the perceived negligence of both these institutions.”13
On 14 December 2010, the European Court of Human Rights held homebirth could be considered a human rights issue. Ternovszky vs Hungary was brought to the Strasbourg Court by Anna Ternovszky, who was pregnant with her second child and a client of Geréb's. New homebirth regulations were released by State Secretary for Health Miklós Szócska on 20 December 2010 – Geréb's birthday – which would legalize home births attended by a midwife. Outside the prison in Budapest, people gathered to celebrate Geréb's birthday in song. The following day, Geréb was released from prison and placed under house arrest. Upon appearing in court in 2011, Geréb was found guilty of negligence and was sentenced to eighteen months in jail with an eight-year ban on her practice. Despite her legal team petitioning the Hungarian president for a pardon in 2012, Geréb's sentence is increased to two years and the ban on her practice was increased to ten years.14 Calls for the reversal of Geréb's prosecution have emerged from the movement’s transnational protest network.15
9 Nick Thorpe, “Kafka in the Circus District: A Short History of Homebirth in Hungary,” Hungarian Review II, no. 01 (January 1, 2011): 50–52.
10 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), 81. ProQuest Ebook Central.
11 Amelia Hill, “Hungary: Midwife Agnes Gereb taken to court for championing home births,” The Guardian, October 22, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/hungary-midwife-agnes-gereb-home-birth.
12 Nick Thorpe, “Kafka in the Circus District: A Short History of Homebirth in Hungary,” Hungarian Review II, no. 01 (January 1, 2011): 50.
13 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), 83. ProQuest Ebook Central.
14 Nick Thorpe, “Kafka in the Circus District: A Short History of Homebirth in Hungary,” Hungarian Review II, no. 01 (January 1, 2011): 56.
15 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), 85. ProQuest Ebook Central.