B.C. ‘childbirth activist’ charged with manslaughter in newborn’s death

A day after CBC revealed that a self-styled Vancouver Island “childbirth activist” was under police investigation, a manslaughter charge has been sworn against Gloria Lemay in relation to the death of a newborn last January.

The charge against the 77-year-old comes almost one year to the day after the alleged victim died on Jan. 6, 2024 — 10 days after a home birth over which Lemay is accused of presiding in contravention of a decades-old court order restraining her from acting as a midwife.

“Investigators believe Ms. Lemay’s involvement in the birth process led to the child’s injuries and eventual death,” Ladysmith RCMP said in a news release. “A warrant was issued for Ms. Lemay on Jan. 7, 2025, and she was arrested later the same day. She has been charged with manslaughter.”

CBC reported on the existence of an RCMP investigation into the newborn’s death on Monday — citing documents filed by B.C.’s College of Nurses and Midwives last year in support of an order to search Lemay’s home.

Civil court documents reveal that the regulator cites incidents dating back to 1985 when Lemay was charged with criminal negligence causing death in connection with a fetus that died in the birth canal. She was convicted of that crime in a lower court but ultimately acquitted in the Supreme Court of Canada, which found that a fetus had to be completely removed from its mother’s body and born alive to be considered a person.

According to court documents, the infant in the latest case was rushed from the home birth site on Dec. 27, 2023, to the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, where she was put on a ventilator. She was then transferred to Victoria General Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, where she died 10 days later.

JT Michaelis Beck — counsel for the College of Nurses and Midwives’s disciplinary and monitoring department — wrote an affidavit containing notes of their interviews with medical staff who dealt with the family after the baby’s birth.

A perinatal loss navigator allegedly described the parents as “intelligent people who received medical care but then were led to believe this was normal and safe.”

Beck wrote that the father claimed the “baby was gasping at birth, just laying there, making some effort, but the dad could tell it wasn’t right. He was asking [Lemay] to do something but she was saying she’s fine.”

“[Lemay] was present ‘doing f—k all’ when [Emergency Medical Services] arrived,” the perinatal loss navigator allegedly told Beck. “[The father] said he knew it was a mistake. [Lemay] told him as they were leaving, ‘if anyone asks, tell them my name is Catherine.'”

Family members visited the baby at the Victoria hospital in the hours before she was removed from life support, holding a small ceremony with flowers and music. “She lived for 14 hours after being extubated,” a nurse told Beck. “Traumatizing for all involved; neonatologist stayed on shift 15 hours in order to provide continuity.”

Weeks later, the college applied to the court for an order to search Lemay’s home for evidence of unauthorized practice alongside RCMP, who obtained a warrant to conduct their own search at the same time. Beck’s affidavit includes a memorandum of understanding between police and the college, noting that RCMP “would like me to be present in order to assist them in identifying materials that might relate to its investigation into criminal negligence causing death.”

On her website, Lemay says she wants her gravestone to read “Gloria Lemay/ Birth Attendant and Mother/ She spoke up for babies.”

In a post written in 2017, she claims legislators have “tried to make laws to cover a life event that is natural and one that a woman can do all by herself if she chooses.”

“Birth is a normal life process,” the post reads. “We don’t usually legislate who can be with an adult when they are in their own home. What can you make illegal about a woman having a baby and choosing someone to be with her?”

In 1995, Lemay was called to a coroner’s inquest after she assisted in the 1994 home birth of a baby who lived for three days before succumbing to septic shock caused by blood poisoning from an E. coli infection. Lemay was found in contempt of court in 1995 for refusing to answer the coroner’s questions.

The recommendations that followed the inquest called for the enforcement of standards and regulations by a college of midwifery — which wasn’t established in B.C. until 1998.

Lemay has never been a licensed midwife in British Columbia. In 2002, she was found in criminal contempt of an order preventing her from acting as a midwife and spent two months in prison.

None of the latest allegations have been proven in court.