Is birth going backwards in Australia?

I was told I have to have an epidural because I was having twins, said one of the guests on Jenny Brockie's Insight program on SBS-TV last night (Tuesday March 10) I first wrote Having a baby in 1997 and it is focussed on information and strategies to help women have a positive, rewarding birth experience. In those days it looked like things were looking up for women who wanted to birth their way - and to avoid medical intervention. By the time I wrote the 2nd edition of Having a baby in 2004 it was not looking good. In fact the experience of giving birth in Australia seems to have gone back to the 1970s when I had my first baby and we were fighting for information and a say in how and where we gave birth.
In 2004 Marsden Wagner, who was a consultant for the WHO on Maternal and Child Health wrote a paper called ''Fish can't see water. The need to humanize birth in Australia." He wrote "Humanizing birth means understanding that the woman giving birth is a human being, not a machine and not just a container for making babies... fish can't see the water they swim in. Birth attendants, be they doctors, midwives or nurses, who have experienced only hospital based, high interventionist, medicalised birth cannot see the profound effect their interventions are having on the birth." And so it seems that is still the case.
Speakers on Insight included Jennifer Gamble, a researcher from Griffith University, whose research into the emotional consequences of medicalised childbirth echoes so much of what was found in the 1970s. The participants reminded me so much of similar TV debates that were held in 1970s and 1980s - different people, but similar experiences and proposals on how birth can be made more 'humanized'.
The Australian government has recently (Feb) been presented with the National Review of Birth Services in which Rosemary Bryant, the Commonwealth's chief nurse and midwifery officer recommends that midwifes should be included in the Medicare rebate schedule, that midwifery based birth should be more widely available and that more needs to be done to smooth the relationship between midwives and obstetricians.
It is so sad that having a baby in Australia is still an obstacle course for most women. That birth is so medicalised and instutionalised that women are still considered to be machines containing babies. I spent 18 years as the editor of Australia's Parents magazine and of Pregnancy magazine promoting woman centred birth. I watched women give birth in many different situations and I observed how much more rewarding and healthy the outcome was when the woman was in control and supported by those who respected her wishes and cared for her as human being. I kinda feel like we made no progress... depressing!