Denying access to delivery rooms is cruel

So many harsh but necessary measures have already been taken in Montreal to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Patients dying in hospices are not allowed to have visitors until their final few hours. Cancer treatments and other elective surgeries have been postponed. The elderly have been confined to their old age homes, sometimes imprisoned in their rooms.

But of all the indignities, among the cruellest is the decision of the Jewish General Hospital

to ban all spouses or birth companions of any sort from the delivery room.

Since last week, husbands must drop their labouring wives off at the triage centre. Then they have to leave. The mother has to go into the hospital alone, without a trusted partner or loved one to provide comfort, encouragement and support.

She must cope with the pain, fear, agony and elation all by herself. Then she must get through those first sleepless nights in postpartum recovery, first feedings and first diaper changes alone, while physically and emotionally exhausted.

No matter how kind, capable and attentive the doctors and nurses at the Jewish are — and I can vouch for their outstanding care, having had two babies there myself — they cannot replace the role of a beloved spouse during a mother’s most vulnerable moments.

Not only is this exclusion inhumane for the birthing mother, it is equally excruciating for the father or co-parent. He will be left to wait and wonder how the delivery is going, denied the joy of watching his child enter the world and kept from those first few indescribable minutes, hours and days of fatherhood.

Let’s not forget the tiny newborns coming into this isolation. These babies are missing out on the chance to bond with both parents immediately. These are precious moments that families will never get back. Perhaps because this quintessential human experience is so relatable to so many, it feels all the more unbearable.

The Jewish General’s reason for this draconian measure is that there was an “unfortunate incident,” where a father with COVID -19 showed up at the maternity ward, putting the lives of countless staff and patients at risk.

There is no question we must protect the health of heroic doctors, nurses and orderlies at all cost during this pandemic, not to mention other patients. But do we let one selfish, ignorant or reckless jerk spoil things for all expectant parents at the hospital? Could a repetition be prevented with stricter protocols?

There are lots of COVID -19 cases at the Jewish, Premier François Legault noted in his daily briefing Monday, defending the move. But his justification seems at odds with the explanation of the hospital itself.

Legault tried to reassure pregnant women across Quebec that the exclusion of birth partners affects just one hospital and the government is not looking to expand the policy. This only makes the Jewish General’s edict that much more questionable — and more unfair.

Even in New York, which has been hammered by COVID-19,

Governor Andrew Cuomo overturned a ban on birth partners in the delivery room.

The World Health Organization in 2018 issued 56 new evidence-based guidelines for women in labour; high on the list is the presence of “a companion of her choice.”

There’s something deeply misogynistic about this regulation. In one fell swoop, the last several decades of progress surrounding women’s rights in childbirth have been cast aside. It’s almost like we’ve gone back to the 1950s where women were knocked out for the duration, their husbands left to pace the waiting room floor.

Pregnant women already are nervous enough about having to go to the hospital during this pandemic. The desperate or daring might try for a last-minute birth at home, potentially harming themselves and their babies. In the best circumstances, home births require careful preparation