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How Britain became a dangerous place to have a baby

What are the roots of today’s maternity crisis? Recent research by the Care Quality Commission has found a “concerning decline” in England, with over half of maternity wards rated substandard. Donna Ockenden’s review of Shrewsbury and Telford maternity trust found that, between 2001 and 2019, 201 babies and nine mothers had died avoidable deaths.

In this week’s audio long read, the editor of the New Statesman’s Spotlight magazine Alona Ferber traces the origins of this decline – from the advent of woman-centred care in the 1980s to today’s more frayed and divided landscape. Are austerity and…

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