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[Elizabeth McAlpine]

Dear Listers,   Don't know if you have seen this maternity manifesto sent to election candidates in the U.K. - courtesy of the RCM midwives journal, June 2001.   Do the maternity services in you community:   1.   Employ enough midwives to provide one-to-one care for every woman during labour?   2.   Allow women to get to know the midwives who will care for them?   3.   Provide women with real choices about how and where they give birth?          small midwife led units, hospitals, home     4.   Offer high quality care that is cost-effective?           overmedicalised childbirth with high C/S rates and         obstetric litigation cost $millions.              5.   Give women and babies the care they need in the first days and weeks after birth?           underfunded     Maybe we should get our college to do the same thing?   For pregnant women at election - a new slogan perhaps.   'Lets labour with Labour'    Ah, but will Labour promise to deliver choice and improved maternity care??   Liz McAlpine