Over a weekend in late June 2024, Emilee Saldaya, the leader of the Free Birth Society, hosted a festival on her 21-hectare (53-acre) property in North Carolina. It was a celebratory gathering for FBS, a multimillion-dollar business that promotes a radical approach to giving birth without medical support.
Promotional footage from the Matriarch Rising festival shows Saldaya dancing beside her private lake, wearing a crown. That same weekend, more than 3,000 miles away, in Dundalk, a town on the east coast of Ireland, Naomi James, bled to death after freebirthing her son.
