this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Lopez had met her three friends through the Free Birth Society (FBS), a business that promotes freebirth. Unlike home birth – birth at home with a midwife in attendance – freebirth means giving birth without any medical support. FBS promotes a version widely seen as extreme, even among freebirth advocates: it is anti-ultrasound, which it falsely claims harms babies, downplays serious medical conditions and promotes wild pregnancy, meaning pregnancy without any prenatal care.

FBS was founded by ex-doula Emilee Saldaya, and most women find it through its podcast, which has been downloaded 5m times, its Instagram account, which has 132,000 followers, its YouTube, with nearly 25m views, or its bestselling The Complete Guide to Freebirth, a video course co-created by Saldaya with fellow ex-doula Yolande Norris-Clark, available for download from FBS’s slick website. Analysis of FBS’s financial records by Stacey Ferris, a forensic accountant and academic at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, suggests it has generated revenues exceeding $13m since 2018.

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[–] Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca 1 points 20 minutes ago

Darwin in practice?

[–] calliope@retrolemmy.com 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I have a feeling this is happening with a lot of things.

A lot of homeschooled kids won’t be educated at all, for example.

[–] Wren@lemmy.today 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Yeah, without a strong educational platform it's very difficult for someone to separate good information from bad. Public schools in a lot of countries aren't much better.

[–] Aneb@lemmy.world 13 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Always trust the medical opinion of an unlicensed professional promoter. Also everything you read on the internet is true

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 2 points 39 minutes ago

I can't believe I'm saying this, but China got it right with only allowing influencers with qualifications on area of their expertise to make such opinions.

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Also everything you read on the internet is true

Only if support pre existing beliefs

[–] ProfThadBach@lemmy.world 0 points 12 hours ago

Who is to blame here? The people listening to these idiot are. They they did not listen the village idiot would have no platform.

[–] Angelevo@feddit.nl 0 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Natural Selection at work.

[–] Wren@lemmy.today 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

That's not very cool. Babies died. People lost their babies.

[–] Angelevo@feddit.nl 1 points 1 hour ago

I can only agree.