Maternity Care Reform Faces Resistance as Ireland Moves Toward Universal State Funding

I’m giving birth as a battle rages over maternity care in Ireland. We shouldn’t have to pay to feel safe | Caelainn Hogan

An unfair two-tier system is, at last, giving way to universal state care. But private interests and highly paid doctors are resisting There were no chandeliers in the public ward where I spent my first days as a mother, at the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world. The room echoed with cries, the well-worn floor bouncing under footsteps, the windows looking out on Dublin’s city centre. Now the Rotunda hospital, where I’m due to give birth again soon, is counting do...

By Caelainn Hogan