In the space of a few days, the story of a young couple from Vitré (Ille-et-Vilaine) who denounced the placement of their two children, including a newborn, after a home birth, went around social networks. It all starts with the testimony of a young mother, Noémie, broadcast on Saturday June 11. She explains that she gave birth a week earlier to a little girl, Lou, ” in [sa] house with [s]we companion and [s]a 2 year old daughter ». “It was fabulous, fast, painless, finally here it is, the dream we’ve been waiting for for nine months”, she adds. But, according to her, the dream quickly turns into a nightmare when the father of the child goes to the civil status office of his municipality to declare the birth, after four days. “At the town hall, the lady panicked when she saw that we had had no medical assistance at home”, explains Noémie. The maternal and child protection services (PMI) are then alerted.
At their insistence, “we went to the maternity ward to have our daughter examined by a pediatrician, so that they would leave us alone”says the young woman, who did not respond to requests from the Monde. But the next day, law enforcement officials, presented consecutively by the mother in her online testimony as “ten policemen” and “police”, go to the couple’s home and leave with the two children, in order to place them in the nursery. A ” removal “ denounced by the parents, who see it as a sanction following “of a completely legal choice of childbirth but not accepted however by the institutions: unassisted childbirth [sans personnel médical] ». The couple, who decided to publicize their story by creating an Instagram account and a Facebook page, also launched an online kitty to be able to pay their legal fees. Their story was widely relayed by home birth activists.
Different version of local and judicial authorities
Contacted, the local and judicial authorities, however, deliver a rather different version of the facts. In the chronology, first. According to the town hall of Vitré, when the father went to the civil status service on Tuesday, June 7, to declare a birth that had occurred four days earlier, the agents asked him for the medical certificate of delivery. The father replied that he did not have one, his concubine having given birth at home, and “the officers then asked if the child and the mother had been seen by a doctor, the father replied no”.
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