Free Birth Society Harms Babies

The Monetisation of Tragedy: How the ‘Wild’ Birth Movement Sells a Deadly Dream

Acoustic guitar music played softly in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a Pennsylvania suburb, masking the gravity of the situation unfolding within. Gabrielle Lopez labored on her bed, surrounded by three friends who murmured affirmations about her strength and sovereignty. The atmosphere remained intentionally serene, designed to mimic the peaceful, autonomous birth videos that proliferate on social media. Yet, beneath the calm facade, a catastrophic biological reality was taking hold. For seventeen minutes, the umbilical cord compressed against the birth canal, cutting off the oxygen supply to Esau, the baby boy fighting to enter the world. The women in the room, entranced by an ideology that views medical intervention as an act of violence, failed to recognize the silence for what it was: the sound of a dying child.

The Physiology of a Stalled Delivery

Esau suffered from shoulder dystocia, a mechanical obstruction where the baby’s head emerges, but the anterior shoulder becomes trapped behind the mother’s pubic bone. In a hospital delivery room, obstetricians and midwives view this as a supreme emergency, requiring immediate, specific maneuvers to free the infant before asphyxiation occurs. Medical teams train relentlessly for this specific scenario, knowing that every second of delay increases the risk of permanent brain damage or death. However, Gabrielle had chosen to "freebirth," effectively opting out of the medical system entirely. Her companions, lacking clinical training, watched the clock tick past the five-minute mark, then ten, then fifteen, unaware that the baby’s shoulder was grinding against Gabrielle’s pelvis like a tire spinning in mud.

A Mother’s Instinct Suppressed

Gabrielle felt a primal, terrifying wrongness deep in her gut as her son failed to emerge despite her superhuman efforts. She asked her friends to help pull him out, her voice laced with rising panic that the group’s dogma explicitly discouraged. One friend dismissed her fears, murmuring that the baby was safe and that she should trust the process. The group had conditioned themselves to view fear not as a survival signal, but as a lack of faith in the birthing body. When Gabrielle finally expelled her son at 10 pm on 9 October 2022, the room’s ecstatic energy evaporated instantly. Esau lay limp, white, and silent, his legs a bruised purple, signs of acute hypoxic injury.

The Denial of Reality

Rolando, the baby's father, handed the lifeless infant to Gabrielle, who stared at her son’s unmoving chest. She asked if he needed air, but a friend insisted he was fine, adhering to the dangerous belief that babies transition to life at their own pace. The group remained paralyzed by a collective delusion, terrified that acknowledging the emergency would betray their shared philosophy. They waited for Esau to breathe, wasting precious minutes that determined the course of his future. The women clung to the teachings of Emilee Saldaya, the founder of the Free Birth Society, who preaches that birth is inherently safe and that women must simply surrender to the experience.

The Architecture of an Anti-Medical Empire

Gabrielle found this group through the Free Birth Society (FBS), a multi-million dollar business that has radically reshaped the landscape of alternative maternity care. Founded by Emilee Saldaya and her business partner Yolande Norris-Clark, FBS promotes an extreme form of unassisted childbirth. The company generates massive revenue—estimated at over $13 million since 2018—by selling courses, memberships, and coaching to women who feel alienated by the medical system. Their slickly produced content discourages prenatal care, demonizes ultrasounds, and frames doctors as predators. For a $299 annual fee, women join "The Lighthouse," a private online community where members reinforce each other's distrust of modern medicine.

Exploiting Trauma and Distrust

The movement finds fertile ground among women who have suffered genuine trauma in hospital settings. Many followers share harrowing stories of obstetric violence, non-consensual procedures, and disrespectful treatment by hospital staff during previous births. Kaitlin Pearl Coghill, a writer from California, turned to freebirth after an obstetrician performed an invasive membrane sweep without her consent, an act she describes as assault. For these women, FBS offers a seductive narrative of reclamation and power. Saldaya and Norris-Clark position themselves as the only ones telling the truth, promising that unassisted birth restores the sacred dignity that hospitals steal.

The Doctrine of Radical Responsibility

At the heart of the FBS ideology lies the concept of "Radical Responsibility," a term Saldaya appropriated from corporate leadership manuals. This doctrine creates a psychological trap for followers: it asserts that a "sovereign" woman assumes total ownership of her birth’s outcome, including the death of her child. If a baby dies, the ideology frames it not as a medical tragedy, but as a spiritual choice made by the infant or a manifestation of the mother’s journey. This belief system isolates women from concerned family members, whom leaders label as toxic or unsupportive. Nicole Garrison, a New Jersey artist, embraced this mindset so completely that she refused to call an ambulance while hemorrhaging after her delivery, nearly bleeding to death in her bathroom.

Digital Guidance During a Crisis

The tragic death of Journey Moon in 2018 illustrates how direct the influence of FBS leaders can be during a crisis. Lorren Holliday, a mother in the Arizona desert, labored for six days—a duration that signals a profound medical emergency. She exchanged over 100 messages with Saldaya, detailing excruciating pain, foul-smelling fluid, and the passage of green meconium. Instead of advising a hospital transfer, Saldaya told Holliday to "die 1,000 deaths" and surrender to the pain. When Holliday finally sought medical help, her daughter had already died in the womb. Saldaya later denied giving advice, but the message logs reveal a clear pattern of discouraging medical intervention until it was too late.

Profiting from Unlicensed Practice

To monetize their influence further, Saldaya and Norris-Clark created a certification for "Radical Birth Keepers" (RBKs). This program charges students thousands of dollars to become unauthorized birth attendants, explicitly instructing them to operate in the legal grey areas outside of licensed midwifery. The course focuses heavily on branding, marketing, and avoiding legal liability, rather than obstetrical safety. They teach students that they are not healthcare providers and therefore should not carry life-saving equipment like oxygen or hemorrhage medication. This loophole allows them to charge fees comparable to licensed midwives while offering none of the clinical safety nets.

Dangerous Medical Misinformation

The medical advice dispensed within FBS courses often drifts into the realm of the absurd and the lethal. Yolande Norris-Clark has famously rejected germ theory, telling students that they could cut an umbilical cord with "rusty scissors" without causing infection if their mindset was correct. In another instance, Saldaya advised a student that if a piece of placenta remained inside a mother—a major risk for sepsis—she should have her husband remove it rather than seeing a doctor. They have claimed that premature babies born at 33 weeks can thrive at home without support, a statement that neonatologists condemn as dangerously false. This rejection of basic biology arms mothers with a confidence that crumbles only when catastrophe strikes.

The Resuscitation Myth

Perhaps the most chilling tenet of the FBS philosophy concerns neonatal resuscitation. The leaders frame the act of reviving a non-breathing infant as "sabotage" and a violation of the baby's autonomy. Saldaya has stated on podcasts that she would never resuscitate a baby, calling the idea "cuckoo bananas." She teaches that babies must "choose" to breathe and that intervening disrupts their spiritual transition. This guidance leaves parents watching their newborns turn blue and limp, paralyzed by the belief that doing nothing is the highest form of love. The legacy of this teaching is a trail of preventable brain injuries and deaths across multiple continents.

Institutional Failures and Legitimacy

The movement’s reach has inadvertently been boosted by established health institutions. In a humiliating oversight, the UK's National Health Service (NHS) recently found that some of its trusts were directing pregnant women to a charity website that recommended the FBS podcast as an empowering resource. This validation from a trusted health authority likely funneled unsuspecting women into the FBS funnel. The incident highlights the struggle medical institutions face in distinguishing between legitimate advocacy for physiological birth and dangerous extremism. It also underscores the sophistication of FBS’s marketing, which uses the language of feminism and autonomy to mask its dangers.

A Leader’s Disdain for Followers

While Saldaya projects an image of warm, matriarchal sisterhood, private communications reveal a deep disdain for her paying customers. Leaked texts show her referring to followers who ask questions about membership fees as "idiot bitches." She mocked women who sought reassurance, viewing their need for safety as a weakness. This contempt mirrors the dynamics of high-control groups, where the leadership exploits the vulnerability of members while privately despising them. The "sisterhood" serves primarily as a revenue stream, with Saldaya spending her earnings on luxury cars, pool installations, and expansive properties in North Carolina.

Tragedy in Australia

The reach of FBS extends globally, with devastating consequences in Australia. Richa Ekka, a devoted follower, birthed her daughter Gia at home in New South Wales without medical aid, believing hospitals were unsafe. Gia suffered severe oxygen deprivation and died nine days later. Similarly, Stacy Nightingale died in Queensland after a postpartum hemorrhage during a freebirth, leaving her children motherless. These cases sparked a furious debate in Australia, leading to calls for stricter regulations on "birth workers" who are not registered health professionals. The global spread of these tragedies proves that social media algorithms respect no borders when delivering dangerous ideology.

The Community Begins to Fracture

The internal cohesion of the FBS community began to crack in early 2025. A student in the "MatriBirth" program posted a video of her newborn son struggling to breathe, his chest retracting with every gasp. Instead of urging her to call an ambulance, other members offered vague support, and the baby subsequently died. This incident horrified even the most devoted followers. A Reddit community, r/FreeBirthSocietyScam, emerged in March 2025, becoming a gathering place for disillusioned members to deprogram and share evidence of harm. For the first time, the silenced voices of grieving mothers began to drown out the polished marketing of the leaders.

Tragedy Strikes the Leader

In a grim twist of irony, the reality of childbirth caught up with Emilee Saldaya herself. In August 2024, after a "wild pregnancy" with no prenatal care, Saldaya experienced a stillbirth at 41 weeks gestation. She announced the death of her son on social media, framing it within her ideology but shutting down any discussion of whether medical care could have saved him. This event marked a turning point for many followers, who saw the ultimate failure of the "trust birth" philosophy manifest in its creator’s life. Yet, Saldaya publicly doubled down, insisting that her loss only deepened her commitment to the cause.

Legal Consequences in Nicaragua

Yolande Norris-Clark, who had moved her family to Nicaragua to escape what she termed the "authoritarian" Canadian state, faced her own reckoning in late 2024. Reports surfaced that she had fled a specific region in Nicaragua after a birth she attended went wrong, resulting in a mother suffering a seizure and severe hemorrhage. Norris-Clark described herself to students as an "international fugitive," fearing imprisonment in a Central American jail. This brush with the law forced a sudden pivot in their business strategy, as the reality of manslaughter charges loomed over their unlicensed operations.

The Rebrand and Retreat

Facing mounting legal pressure and public scrutiny, FBS attempted a hasty rebrand. They renamed their flagship "MatriBirth Midwifery Institute" to the "MatriBirth Mentor Institute," stripping the word "midwife" to avoid regulatory crackdowns. They added legal disclaimers to their Instagram posts, stating their content is for "entertainment and information only"—a stark contrast to their previous claims of offering the "gold standard" in birth education. This retreat signals that the leaders know the legal walls are closing in, yet they continue to recruit new members, pivoting their language to evade accountability while selling the same dangerous products.

The Lingering Danger

Despite the scandals, the deaths, and the fraud accusations, the allure of the Free Birth Society persists. The algorithms of Instagram and YouTube continue to serve their content to pregnant women searching for natural birth options. For every story of tragedy that breaks through to the mainstream, countless others remain buried in silence, carried by mothers too shamed or traumatized to speak out. Gabrielle Lopez’s son Esau remains severely disabled, a living testament to a seventeen-minute delay caused by a lethal idea. The movement sells a fantasy of control in an unpredictable world, charging a premium price that some families pay with their lives.

A Cycle of Grief and Silence

The culture of silence within the community ensures that new recruits rarely hear about the failures. When a baby dies, the mother is often gently pushed out of the inner circle or encouraged to view the death as a sacred lesson, effectively silencing her dissent. This erasure allows the business to constantly refresh its customer base with naive, hopeful women. The "loss moms" form a shadow community, sharing their grief in secret, haunted by the realization that the empowerment they bought was a mirage. As long as social media platforms allow medical misinformation to masquerade as female empowerment, the cycle of preventable tragedy will continue unbroken.