Birthrights, the maternity rights charity has heard from nearly 300 people, including women and birthing people and healthcare professionals, who describe feeling coerced, or witnessing coercion, during maternity and birth experiences. Birthrights’ Communications Manager Miranda Atty explains more.
We launched this investigation and subsequent campaign because, over the past year, we have received a significant number of reports into our Advice and Information Service about coercive practices and discriminatory policies resulting in unequal care and the denial of rights. In fact, in 2025, more than 20% (112) of the service users supported by our Information and Advice Service referred to the use of coercive practices.
We are extremely worried that the elevated number of cases we are seeing is evidence of a growing erasure of our human rights in maternity.
Our CEO Hazel Williams says: “Rooted in racist and patriarchal practice, women and birthing people are repeatedly being told you are “not allowed” or threatened with children’s services referrals, not given full facts and denied genuine informed choice. Coercion has no place in safe maternity care and must stop now.”
So, we set out to understand the scale of the problem by hearing from the women, birthing people and healthcare professionals directly affected.
How did we do this? Via:
- Online surveys, where we heard from 104 women and birthing people, and 63 healthcare professionals
- The cases that came into our Advice and Information Service
- In-depth interviews about specific experiences of coercion
- And consultation with community groups and other charities who work with LGBTQIA+ birthing people of colour and refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant women and birthing people.
In total, we heard from nearly 300 people.
Their accounts reveal a broad spectrum of coercive behaviours, ranging from subtle pressure and manipulation to explicit threats and intimidation.
These experiences demonstrate patterns of behaviour that compromise informed consent, bodily autonomy, and trust in care.
Common practices include:
- Frequent use of permission-based language (e.g., “you’re not allowed”).
- Judgmental or fear-inducing comments, escalating to overt threats such as “If you don’t do X, your baby will die”.
- Use of stigmatising language to dismiss personalised decisions as “out of guidance,” triggering further coercion.
- Threats linked to refusing antibiotics or scans, sometimes including the threat of referral to social services.
- Being mocked, belittled, or infantilised.
- Pressure to undergo induction, or accept sweeps or vaginal examinations without meaningful consent.
- Misinformation or lack of information about risks, leading to an inability to make informed choices.
- Withholding information about what is happening during birth, with some people only discovering later.
- Providing false information about risks to the baby or women and birthing person, or misleading explanations about procedures.
Of the 104 women and birthing people we spoke to for our online survey:
- 92% of them said that they were not provided with all the information they needed before making a decision about their care,
- 81% said they were told they were ‘not allowed’ to make a particular choice.
Our report reveals a number of key themes, and, as ever, it is the already marginalised who are most at risk.
Accounts confirmed continued discrimination in the system, which we first raised in our Systemic Racism Not Broken Bodies report, with Black, Brown, migrant, and Traveller communities disproportionately targeted for referrals and surveillance. We found evidence of racialised risk profiling, leading to unnecessary interventions (e.g., drug testing), being labelled “out of guidance” by default, and birth place and birth choice options being unjustly and unlawfully denied.
One woman we spoke to had social services and the police called because she was trying to change service provider. She felt they tried to portray her “as though I was the aggressive, angry black woman. They said I wasn’t letting anyone see the baby and called social services and police.”
Women and birthing people also felt they had been provided with biased, incomplete and inaccurate information, undermining their ability to make informed decisions. We also heard about pressure being exerted to accept medical procedures without informed consent and even the use of physical coercion.
One survey respondent told us: “They broke my waters without explanation of need, risk or benefit. They forced me into an epidural. They gave me an episiotomy and the only information I was given was “I’m going to cut you” and I tried to run away and screamed “no” but they did it anyway.”
What does the law say?
Our Legal Lead, Laura Mullarkey, explains: “The law requires clinicians to support pregnant women and birthing people to make their own informed decisions about their care, by offering a personalised dialogue to ensure they understand all material risks, benefits and reasonable alternatives to any recommended treatment. If an individual is coerced to make a particular decision, that legal standard is breached.
“Examples could include clinicians refusing to share information about a reasonable treatment option (“we don’t allow maternal request c-sections here”), misrepresenting the evidence (“if you go over 42 weeks, your baby will die”) or pressurising an individual to accept an intervention they don’t want (“if you decline vaginal exams we won’t be able to admit you to the ward”)”
There are clear guidelines from the Nursing and Midwifery Council, (as well as the Royal College of Midwives and the General Medical Council) about standards to be adhered to, including that those using maternity services should be provided with evidence-based information to make an informed choice and should be able to decline or stop conversations around their care, regardless of their reason for doing so.
Birthrights has identified four calls to action which we believe will help to tackle coercion in maternity care:
- End racialised and discriminatory practices, including disproportionate social services referrals, unnecessary drug testing, and NHS charging rules.
- Introduce safeguards against coercive practices, including routine monitoring of consent practices, clinical note accuracy, safeguarding referral patterns and guideline development and usage.
- Improve healthcare professionals’ knowledge about rights-based care, informed choice and consent, with mandatory training on human rights law across all maternity staff, including obstetrics, anaesthetics and neonatal care.
- Ensure safe staffing and safe working environments in all elements of maternity services, ensuring staff can raise concerns without fear of reprisal and are enabled to facilitate rights-centred, personalised care rather than defensive practice.
You can download a copy of our full report ‘End Coercion in Maternity Care in the UK’ here.
March 2026
Miranda Atty, Communications Manager, Birthrights
Email: miranda@birthrights.org.uk