"A privalaged man once decided during a global pandemic that 6 people may go to a pub together, but a birthing mother cannot have her partner in hospital with her unless she submits to intrusive vaginal examinations and is in established labour".

I am every day seeing accounts of women's inhumane treatment during their labour's and birth under the absurd ruling that partners can't be present until a woman is considered to be in active labour.

With every detailed and desperate story I read from these women, terrified and completely alone, I fear for their mental health and the untold lasting effects the circumstances they are thrown in to will create.

Women are being coerced into vaginal examinations to establish how far along they are in their labour without being given an alternative choice. Women who have suffered abuse, traumatic births, rape, or simply want to retain autonomy over their body and make an informed decision, maybe they'd rather not have a vaginal examination as they'd like to minimise their risk of infection, or its painful, or uncomfortable, or they simply do not wish to have one. These women are being given no alternative but to be examined in order to have their chosen partner be with them through the most challenging and vulnerable time in their lives, often only to be told they're not established enough for their partners to come in. Probably, because of how the stress and upset of having to labour alone is affecting their progress.

This ruling needs to be overturned before we have a mental health crisis for which we do not have the resourses. It needs to be overturned to save a generation of new parents the cruelest heartbreak of having to receive bad news by themselves, Labour to deliver a stillborn child alone. Go to scans alone only to find out the ivf baby they've tried so desperately for has no heartbeat anymore.

This cannot continue. My heart is breaking everyday for these families. Especially the ones who are going in to this for the first time or after a trauma or loss and are trusting their health care providers to do what's best for them only to be offered unnecessary interventions to speed things along so they can have their partners with them, but then leading to a cascade of painful undignified interventions and ultimately, ptsd, pnd, post natal anxiety, post natal psycosis, physical scarring, detachment.... It goes on...

This ends with you Mr Johnson. And it needs to end now.