Birth choice in Australia is on the line.
Allowed to Birth follows a global midwife — but the fight for birth choice is happening right here, in our own federal and state policy. Here's where each campaign stands today, and how you can add your voice this week.
Three fights happening in Canberra right now
Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII)
The current PII exemption that lets registered midwives attend homebirths is set to end on 1 January 2027. Without government action, many second midwives won't be able to keep attending births at home — putting professionally supported homebirth out of reach for thousands of families.
Read more at Homebirth Australia →MBS rebates for homebirth
Medicare Benefits Schedule items exist for midwifery care, but current rules specifically exclude any birth that happens at home — no Medicare benefit is payable if a homebirth occurs. Homebirth Australia and its partner organisations continue to push for funding reform that doesn't penalise families for choosing to birth at home.
See Homebirth Australia's advocacy partners →Federal briefs from MCA & MCN
Maternity Choices Australia and the Maternity Consumer Network — Australia's two leading maternity consumer advocacy bodies — regularly brief federal decision-makers, calling for bundled maternity funding, a workable PII solution, and a genuine consumer voice in national maternity policy.
Visit Maternity Consumer Network →Visit Maternity Choices Australia →
Want to take this further? MCN's campaign resources
The Maternity Consumer Network keeps a set of ready-to-use letter templates for local, state and federal advocacy — take one, personalise it, and send it to your MP or local health service.
What Maternity Choices Australia & MCN are pushing for locally
MGP targets in service agreements
Midwifery Group Practice (known-midwife, continuity-of-care) gives one midwife or a small team to a woman across pregnancy, birth and postpartum. Consumer groups are calling for MGP access targets to be written directly into public hospital service agreements, not left as an optional extra.
Visit Maternity Choices Australia →Publicly Funded Homebirth (PFHB) expansion
Publicly funded homebirth programs let eligible women give birth at home through the public system, with a hospital-employed midwife. Right now only a small number of Queensland hospitals offer it. The push is to expand PFHB to every hospital, so access doesn't depend on your postcode.
See publicly funded homebirth info →More Level 2 hospitals & birth centres
Level 2 maternity services and birth centres give women more genuine, lower-intervention choices closer to home. Advocacy groups want more facilities upgraded to Level 2 capability and more birth centres opened, so continuity-of-care models have somewhere to actually operate.
Visit Maternity Consumer Network →
Why "known midwife" continuity of care matters
Maternity Choices Australia and the Maternity Consumer Network put together this evidence summary on continuity-of-care models — the evidence base behind the push for MGP targets above, and a good one to share if you're talking to your MP or your hospital.
It's cheaper for government too: public Midwifery Group Practice care has been shown to be 22% cheaper than standard models — the equivalent of around $1.6 billion a year if every woman in Australia had access to it.
Ask whether Midwifery Group Practice (or a private midwife) is available near you.
Your voice moves this faster than ours does.
Homebirth Australia has made it simple to email your local Federal MP about the PII exemption ending on 1 January 2027 — send their suggested message as-is, or personalise it with why access to homebirth matters to your family.
Prefer to meet your MP in person? Homebirth Australia can help you request a meeting and even join via Zoom for support. See their full call to action →