The Current - Freebirthing society linked to harm

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

A year-long Guardian investigation has uncovered dozens of baby deaths around the world - including Canada - linked to mothers influenced by Free Birth Society, or FBS. We speak with Sirin Kale, one of the journalists behind the investigation of the multi-million dollar business run by two influencers promoting the idea of giving birth with no medical assistance,

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the great Canadians. Oh, here you are. You're here and we're here. No matter what race you were, what color you were, what religion you were, what language you spoke, you watched Mr. Dressup. The tickle trunk was this magical like Pandora's Box. I'm talking about Captain Dressup. Mr. Dressup, the magic of make-believe. You made me what I am today.

You know that. Watch free on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. When Lauren Holiday was planning to have her first child, she knew she wanted a natural childbirth. She and her partner lived in a trailer on a plot of land in the desert in Arizona,

and they couldn't afford the thousands of dollars for a midwife. And so, while researching her options, she stumbled across a podcast by the Free Birth Society. I got so hyped up on those stories because everybody did it. I mean, it was so successful and had amazing stories with birthing in a yard, birthing in a river, birthing outside, by a fire. I was like, that's what I want.

And if they can do it, I can do it too. The Free Birth Society, or FBS, is a multi-million dollar business. It promotes childbirth without any medical support or intervention. Lauren joined the Facebook group, and throughout her pregnancy, and during labor, she received advice from the group's founder, Emily Saldaya. It got to where we could talk on Facebook or Instagram. I trusted her very, very much. I felt like she proved herself since she had led all these other women to these great victories in their births.

And so I was excited for my turn, my victory with my baby. Lauren was told that she could trust her body and trust the birthing process. They tell you not to do the OBGY and stuff. So I quit doing that. No more doctors. No tests. No, you know, no blood work or visit. or sonogram, or ultrasounds, nothing.

But we didn't know what her gender was. We stayed away, stayed away from the doctors because my body was meant to do this. Six days into her labor, though, she knew that she and her baby were in trouble. Reluctantly, Lauren went to a nearby hospital only to discover that her daughter was dead. This is just one of dozens of stories

uncovered by a year-long investigation by the guardian of women and their baby's experience with the Free Birth Society. Shear and Kale is one of the journalists behind the investigation and a podcast called The Birth Keepers. She is in London, England. Shearin, hello. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Thanks for being here.

What is the Free Birth Society? The Free Birth Society is a multi-million dollar business which promotes free birth. And a lot of people get confused about what free birth is. They get it confused with home birth, which is birth at home with the midwife present. But free birth is living birth without any sort of medical assistance, what's the child. whatsoever. And most of the women we spoke to for our reporting found the Free Birth Society, FBS, after searching online for pretty mainstream birth content, so, you know, doodling natural birth or home birth or birth options, and then the algorithm does its work, and they find FBS.

FBS has an Instagram account, but most women turn to the podcast, and it's the podcast that really gets them. There would be nine seasons of the podcast, and it's these hugely compelling stories of women free birthing, often, you know, out in nature, by a fire, that the stories are really, really captivating. And many women we spoke to for our reporting said that they decided to free birth after binging the podcast, and they described it as quite an addictive podcast. And the podcast has been downloaded something like five million times, is that right? Yes, it's been downloaded five million times. And the podcast host is a woman called Emily Saldaya.

So Emily Saldaya founded the Free Birth Society and she leads the organisation with support from her business partner, who is a Canadian called Yolanda Norris Clark. And these women are hugely influential in online birth circles, you know, the most famous free birth influences in the world, I'd say comfortably. But they promote a version of free birth, which is very radical and very extreme. So outside of FBS circles, many women who choose to free birth, which is a legal right in many countries in the world, do so with input from medical professionals during their pregnancy. So they go to hospitals, they have scans, they get blood work done, they sort of know what's going on in their bodies and then they make a decision to free birth if everything seems well and they're healthy at the end of their pregnancy. pregnancies. But FBS has popularised a version of free birth, which is, I would say, very radical. So they have popularised a practice known as wild pregnancy. And wild pregnancy is when you don't have any interaction with medical providers at all during your pregnancy. So no blood tests. You know, in some cases, women are not even taking pregnancy tests, which means they don't actually know how many weeks pregnant they are when they go into labour. And it's this version of free birth in which Emily and Yolanda have popular eyes, which has led, sadly, to some really serious alleged real world harm. We heard Lauren talk a little bit about that. I mean, no tests. As you said, they're anti-altrosound.

And they believe in that idea that birth is safe, trust the process, right? Yes. And I would actually say that they go one step further, which is that they argue that free birth is the safest type of birth that you can have. and they use this language of sabotage. So their view is that most of the things that go run in birth, you know, most of the complications and life-threatening emergencies that are caused are actually caused by doctors and medical professionals and midwives who unnecessarily intervene in women's births

and then create problems that they later have to fix. And it's a logic that might seem a bit confusing to people who don't know much about this world. but Emily and Nylanda are very compelling communicators. The podcast is, you know, it's a really, really compelling listen. And they also claim to have tremendous and considerable experience in birth. And so they speak so confidently that women listen to them. And they say, well, actually, most of the things you need to worry about in birth

are being caused by medical professionals. And so the women we spoke to our reporting felt that the safest choice was to free birth because they wanted to avoid hospitals that might derail their births with unnecessary interventions. You referred to them as influencers. What qualifications do these two women have to guide other women through not just childbirth, but prenatal care as well? So Emily and Yolanda are both ex-dullors. So a doula is a professional who supports the women emotionally and practically through labor. dealers often have a lot of information and knowledge about birth,

but they are not medical professionals, they're not midwives, they're not doctors, and that's not their job. So Emily and Yolanda are both ex-doulers. They're not licensed medical professionals. This has been, as we said, the podcast has been downloaded millions of times. Their revenues exceed something like $13 million the last several years.

What do you understand about why it is that women would be drawn to something? like this. It's such a great question. And there's a couple of different answers to that. So I would say that there's a really small minority of women who will always choose free birth. It's something that they feel really compelled to do. They might not even know what free birth is. It's just something that they feel an intuitive calling towards. But those women, I would say, are very much a very small minority. Many of the women, my reporting partner, Lucy Osborne and I spoke to for our reporting, had previously had traumatic experiences in hospitals. In some instances,

They had had really traumatic first births, where they felt that they unfortunately underwent medical procedures that they didn't really need, that weren't fully consented. You know, I think trauma is a big factor pushing women to choose free birth. There's a desire to really stay away from hospitals, which is very understandable if you've had a really difficult and upsetting first birth. So that was a major factor that came up often. another one was cost so obviously in the US

you do not have universal health care and many women purchased a video course from FBS called the Complete Guide to Free Birth which only sells for a few hundred dollars and they felt okay this will give us all the information that we need to free birth at home and then I won't have to pay for the cost of a home birth midwife for example and that can run to thousands of dollars

that you have to pay also pocket up front And then I would say that there was another category of women who would have been open to having had a midwife at their birth and who probably would have chosen that. You know, that's something that we had a lot, Lucy and I, you know, that I probably would have had a home birth with a midwife, right, not for finding FBS. But FBS has this argument that Emily Saldaya and Yelanda and Ois Clark make often, which is that when you invite a licensed midwife into your home, what you are you. really doing is inviting the hospital in. And that message really scared women. And I think it really pushed them away from midwives. And so one thing that came up time and time again was women saying, I wanted actually a bit more support. I wanted a medical professional at my birth. I wanted a midwife. But FBS told me that I needed to avoid midwives because they were going

to sabotage my birth. I mean, again, and this goes back to the trauma and the procedures that perhaps weren't consented to, one of the things that you point out in the reporting are the high rates of C-sections, particularly in the United States, right? Absolutely. I mean, the U.S. has, I think, a really overly interventive approach to birth. You know, C-section rates can vary from 7 to 70% pending on provider preference.

Many women told us that, you know, they really felt like when they went into hospital, they were on the clock, and it wasn't their clock. It was their physician's clock. And they really felt that they were having interventions performed on them that they didn't want to have in order to, comply with hospital policies or insurance provider policies. And then, you know, even though and beyond that, you know, obstetric violence is a term that is often used to describe what

happens to women in hospitals, which is things like episiotomy is being performed without consent, and women routinely having rational examinations that aren't consensual. You know, this story is about FBS and about the free birth society, but FBS wouldn't exist, I think, if hospitals weren't really failing women. You're an investigative reporter, and you learned about, this and got it involved in this investigation, a part because of a video that you were sent, right? Yeah, so

Lucy Osborne, my reporting partner and I had been monitoring FBS for a number of months. We had come across it because we were interested in the social media commentary around birth, and we were seeing a lot of social media accounts that didn't seem to be putting out accurate

information but had many, many followers, and FBS was the main one that we were monitoring. And then earlier this year, I was sent a video by a source and it is hugely upsetting. And it is a video of a baby that very sadly died that was posted by a member of the Free Birth Society within a closed online forum for FBS members. And the mother posted it. It was of her child and the child had been born alive following a nine-day free birth in which she had been posted in within this closed FBS membership, quite concerning details about her birth that would indicate really that

urgent medical attention was required. And very sadly, the baby died and the video was of the baby before it passed away. And, you know, Lucy and I are experienced and we were very good at maintaining, you know, professional detachment between the content of our work and ourselves as people, but it was a very upsetting video to watch. And when I saw it, when Lucy saw it, I think we both really felt okay. You know, this, this seems like a very, very important story to report. I think it's really in the public interest. And unfortunately, you know, during the time it took us to report this story, this was a year-long investigation from beginning to end. there were other losses within this community as well.

Choose clicks, choose the algorithm, choose doom scrolling at 3am, eyes tired, brain rewired, choose headlines that scream, choose fake friends, deep fakes, bots, and comment wars that never end. Choose truth bent and broken until you can't tell up from down or write from wrong. Choose the chaos, choose the noise. Or don't. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. So Lauren Holliday that we heard from at the beginning of this conversation,

she was in labour for six days. What was going on? Yeah, so firstly, I just want to say that it was, Lauren has been incredibly brave in speaking with us and sharing her experiences, because after her daughter, Journey Moon, died, she sadly received a lot of hate mail. And so for her to speak out again, I think is really commendable.

Sorry, why did she receive hate mail? Yeah, so Lauren posted about Journey Moon's death in the FBS Facebook group, which was subsequently shut down after Journey Moon died. And there were people in this Facebook group who leaked it and it was reported upon. And both Lauren and Emily Saldaya received hate mail as a result. Lauren received you know messages basically accusing her killing her child

the hate mail was so extreme that all these years on Lauren and her partner actually live off grid they don't they don't even let family members know their address because they're so concerned

and anthropomatized by what happened but yes to go back to your question so Lauren was a member of the FBS Facebook group and during her labour she was posting about her labour

how it was progressing in the Facebook group and actually unbeknownst to Lauren, members of the Facebook group were concerned. So Lucy spoke with one midwife who told us that she had actually been posting to Lauren go to hospital, you should go to hospital and these posts were being deleted by the administrators of the Facebook group. And Lauren was also in communication with Emily Saldaya during her labour and was sending her photographs of her maconium stained fluid and describing things that would have. run alarm bells for any medical professional, you know, contractions that were abnormal photographs

of, um, of maconium, which can be a sign that a baby is in distress. And, um, and Emily was encouraging her and sort of telling her to continue all as well. As you mentioned, there was a midwife that was, that was watching this in real time. Um, Renee LaPointe, who, uh, you spoke with, um, about what she was seeing. Have a listen to to, to what she told you on the podcast. I remember saying that's not okay and people saying that's a variation of normal and I'm that's not a variation of normal um she needs help and I remember typing please go to the hospital and as quickly as I would type it it would get taken down why were those posts taken down do you think so within fbs there is a general rule that you cannot advise people to go to hospitals um so in a later iteration of

the FBS closed pay-walled membership. There was a specific rule saying that you cannot share planned engagement with the allopathic, i.e. the medical system. And that rule also applied in the Facebook group. And so, you know, one of the most moving parts of our reporting, I think, was Renee actually realizing that those messages never got through to Lauren. She never knew that. It was all these years on that she actually found that out.

Is there evidence that Lauren's baby could have been saved had she received medical care earlier. Yes. So as part of our reporting, we spoke with a number of experts, and we, with the women's consent, shared details of their situations with them. And it was, and the experts found that this was most likely an avoidable tragedy. Of course, we will never know. You will never know. But the thing that comes up often with these tragic FBS losses is that there were warning signs that were missed, right? They still birth, sadly, there were signs before the babies were lost

and had the mothers been advised or sought medical tear, it is possible there would have been a different outcome. I should say Emily Sardaya did eventually advise Lauren that she might want to seat medical assistance during her labour, but she also provided her with scripts to deceive medics when she got to the hospital. That was what I was going to ask, is that she went to the hospital, but she was instructed to lie to the doctors.

Towards the end of their communications, Emily did advise Lauren that she may want to go in. So Emily did suggest that if it was her, she would probably go in at this point. If it was Emily, she would go in. However, she also provided Lauren with a script, i.e. things to say to the doctors to be misleading about how long have you been in lay before.

Lauren did not follow that script. She went in and was truthful with the medical professionals. Okay. This is investigation. I mean, it's what you wrote in The Guardian, but also this podcast, is harrowing in part because of the numbers here. There are dozens of cases of harm to mothers and their babies who appear to be linked to FBS, something like 18 women whose babies died, some of whom are Canadian as well. What do we know about the Canadians? Over the course of our year long investigation, Lucy Osborne and I found evidence linking FBS to 48 cases of late-term stillbirths or neonatal deaths or other. forms of serious harm involving mothers or birth attendance who appear to be linked to FBS.

And then within that 48, we found a subcategory of 18 women where there was very strong evidence to suggest. And that was evidence, you know, looking at diaries, medical notes, you know, journal entries, corroborating interviews with families and friends, that sort of thing, to suggest that FBS significantly influence their decision leading to potentially avoidable tragedies. And, you know, I think I said before, of course, we can never know whether things would be different. But probable in a number of these cases that with medical attention, these losses should have been avoided. In the Guardian piece, you talk about a thriving underground birth scene in Canada, right? We're talking, I mean, in British Columbia, in New Brunswick and elsewhere.

Yeah, so some of the women we spoke to for our reporting were Canadian. And, you know, I think that Canada is a really interesting case. because a lot of pro-free birth influences sort of drift up through social media across the border. And women that we have spoken do say that they're influenced by US influencers who speak about birth and free birth. But actually, the US birth context is quite different to Canada. Of course, you know, in the US there's no universal healthcare, whereas in Canada you do have access to high quality healthcare. What I would say as well is that Canada is an interesting case because the status of midwives is historically large. behind other developed nations that have stronger cultures of midwifery. And so as a result,

you do have, particularly in British Columbia, a number of unlicensed birth attendants. And, you know, some of these unlicensed birth attendants underground midwives are really skilled, like really knowledgeable about birth and actually are really well equipped to manage potential competitions that might arise. And women are hiring them sometimes with personal reasons or because they don't want to go into the hospital or because they have difficulty accessing home birth midwives, depending on where they live, if it's quite a rural area. But what FBS has also done is it has trained women through online schools. The most famous of these FBS schools are the radical birthkeeper school.

And this is a three-month course that is brought by a Zoom. And around half the content is not actually on birth. So women who complete this FBS course and go out into the world calling themselves radical birthkeepers don't have the skills or knowledge. to handle birth complications or birth emergencies. But unfortunately, the women who are hiring them might not know that. There are women who have spoken up about this, whether it's on Reddit or elsewhere, calling FBS a cult,

saying nobody joins a cult willingly. You think you're joining a great movement. In August, Yolanda Norris Clark responded on the FBS podcast to those complaints. Have a listen to this. They made up a bunch of stories and told a bunch of lies and a bunch of other women who I think were also, to some degree lonely and isolated, believed them. And ultimately, it was and is nothing, really just jealousy, the normal stuff, the stuff that anyone with any degree of impact or fame deals with, projection,

essentially. What do you make of the use of the word cult to describe this? FBS is not by any conventional definition a cult, and I certainly would not call it a cult at all. some former members describe the hold that the organisation has over them as cult-like so some former members say that they now struggle to understand why they made the decisions that they made at the time and they compare it to a high control group but it doesn't it doesn't meet the definition of a cult according to our reporting and I would also say that you know Emily Saldaya has very forcefully and emphatically rejected that you know she put out a statement earlier this year saying that

she rejects this characterisation of her as a manipulative cult leader. That's not what she is. And really central to Emily and Yolanda's view on birth is this idea of radical responsibility and this idea that women are responsible for their own choices. And so they very strenuously reject this idea that women are being influenced and as a result of their information are having these poor outcomes and that they should be held responsible for that. What they very emphatically and persistently say is that women are responsible for their own choices.

And so they do not bear any personal responsibility for what happens to them. The day after your investigation was published, Emily Saldaya posted on FBS's Instagram page, when you challenge the status quo, it pushes back. Peddling propaganda on mainstream news channels is nothing new. Mob mentality has captured those dwelling in darkness. She goes on to say that women have the right to enact our own biology, even in a culture that shames it. Free birth is ours to choose or not to choose.

What is your response to her assertion that it's a woman's right to choose when it comes to her body and birthing plan? What I would say in response to that is the position that's been put forward by many of my sources and by Lucy's sources too. So I think that they found that response very frustrating because I would say basically all, I'm struggling to think of anyone that's not. basically all of our sources are supportive of a women's rights to choose free birth, as our Lucy and I. We really don't take a position or a view on how women choose the birth. That's completely up to the individual women. But what we always feel and say is that women should make those decisions based on accurate information.

And what I would say specifically with regards to Emily's response is that, you know, the calls were coming from within the house in terms of FBS. And by that, I mean, the people who began speaking up about FBS and about the harm. it was causing were free birthers. They were people that were very passionate about free birth who often had free birth themselves, but they felt that the version of free birth that Emily and Yolanda were pioneering was really extreme and harmful and dangerous and dogmatic. And so I think that those people would absolutely say that they support women's choice

that they always have, that they practice that and they live that. But they do not feel that a multi-million dollar organisation, which is what FBS is, should be putting out inaccurate and harmful information that is leading to potentially avoidable tragedies. Were you able to speak with Emily Saldaya or your land in Norse Quark? No, so as we would for any investigation, we sent them a detailed invitation to comment, containing many questions that we hope to seek clarity on, and they did not respond substantively to any of our invitations to comment. Emily Sadea sent one email saying that some of these allegations were false and defamatory,

but she didn't provide any further detail beyond that. Where were you, just finally, where were you left with at the end of this investigation? I mean, were you, were you angry, part of it is you're sad for, you hinted at the reasons why women might choose this path because of how they were treated in the medical system. Where were you left at the end of this? I feel incredibly grateful to our sources who have spoken. about something that's very difficult to speak about, you know, I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it is to lose a child or almost die yourself. Like these are really, really traumatic,

you know, life-changing things. And I think that our sources are people who genuinely want to warn others and help others. And I also, you know, I would really, really hope people would listen to our podcast, The Birth Peepers, which is out on the Guardian Investigates feed. and really think about how they consume information. But I think it's really easy to think, oh, you know, I wouldn't listen to this influencer or I wouldn't make life-changing decisions based on that. But actually, I think we're all really susceptible to information,

disinformation, depending on what our personal preferences are. And I would also say, I really hope medical providers listen to the podcast and read that we are reporting in The Guardian because women are choosing free birth because in many cases they don't have any. other options or they don't feel that they have any other options. And so I don't think that we can really speak about the story without speaking about the factors that are driving women to choose

this. And unfortunately, you know, I'm sitting in London right now. We don't have the best maternity services over here. And that's a picture that is replicated internationally. And so until we really look at the systemic reasons why women are emerging from their births, feeling completely brutalized and traumatized, I think that there will always be organizations and influences like FBS. Sheeran, thank you very much for this. Thank you for having me. Sheeran Keel, Kylie, pardon me, is an investigative journalist at the Guardian newspaper.

We did ask Emily Saldaya and Yolanda Norse Clark for comment on this story and on the reporting that you have been hearing. They did not respond to our requests, but you can listen to Sheeran's podcast, The Birth Keepers, wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca. Podcasts.