Muslim mothers whose babies died or ended up in intensive care after their concerns were ignored have spoken about feeling “unheard and unseen” in UK maternity services because of their faith.
It comes after research published last week by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Muslim Women, which interviewed more than 1,000 Muslim women in the UK and found a fifth had received ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ care when engaging with maternity services. The report was branded “heartbreaking” by the Royal College of Midwives.
Some Muslim women felt they were treated inhumanely and talked down to because they looked different from white women, while Black women were particularly at risk of not being given adequate pain relief. A number said they felt bullied into having labour induced.
