Episode 112 -- The Natural Childbirth Movement
In Bed With The Right
Adrian Daub and Moira Donegan
4.8 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Moira walks Adrian through the strange, diagonalist history of the idea of "natural birth" -- from 1930s eugenicists to hippie communes, from radical feminist spaces to MAHA and the "wild birth"-movement. This episode comes with a bunch of trigger warnings -- please make sure you're in the right headspace before diving in!
Some of the texts we refer to in the episode:
Grantly Dick-Read, Natural Childbirth (1933)
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (1977)
Barbara Ehrenreich, Witches, Midwives and Nurses (1972)
Ina May Gaskin, Spiritual Midwifery (1975)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This mother is compelled to be simultaneously like womb moon Earth Mama matriarch and also like squirting sex pot at the fucking same time, right? |
| 0:12.5 | She's not relieved of sexual responsibility or of the demand to be sexy even when a child is ripping its way out of her vagina, right? |
| 0:21.0 | She's expected to achieve an orgasm, or at least to perform one, |
| 0:25.3 | even as she's giving birth. |
| 0:27.9 | Like, there's a word for this, and it's not fucking liberation. |
| 0:30.8 | You know, it's so fucking dark, man. |
| 0:39.7 | Hello, I'm Adrian Dob. |
| 0:41.6 | And I'm Weirond again. |
| 0:42.8 | Whether we like it or not, we're in bed with the right. |
| 0:46.7 | So, Adrian, today we have an episode on what of my pet interests, the natural childbirth movement. |
| 0:55.9 | Oh, yeah. So I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of trigger warnings coming up, |
| 1:00.7 | and we might as well get those out of the way. |
| 1:02.6 | Yeah. So for one thing, this episode is going to deal with a wide array of the things that can go wrong in childbirth, |
| 1:13.7 | wrong for the mother, wrong for the infant, or wrong at the hands of, like, doctors, midwives, |
| 1:20.7 | doulas. |
| 1:21.9 | And there are some dead babies in this episode. |
| 1:25.4 | So one thing I want to make sure we said right off the back was |
| 1:28.2 | please take care while you listen to this one. This one has moments that are pretty tough. |
| 1:33.9 | The other thing I want to say before we get into this and that I've like encountered when I've |
| 1:38.5 | written about the natural childbirth movement before is that like I just want to emphasize |
| 1:42.3 | as a matter of principle, I and I think Adrian probably |
| 1:45.0 | also you are completely neutral and agnostic about what you do with your body right yeah the good way |
... |
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