Question:
Should midwifery organizations join forces with Women
Organizing for Change, given the obviously "liberal" and perhaps "radical feminist" leanings of WOC and its position in support of legalized abortion?
In my opinion, yes. Many profoundly good reasons have already been
articulated. For example:
Mary Lou: "Divisiveness has been a major obstacle to progress in all the
social movements of the twentieth century. Let's not let it cripple us."
Fran: "Whether we are conservative or liberal, if we want independent
midwifery to survive, we have to get it on the agenda. ...fighting about each
point is why many good strong movements fizzle. Can we set aside our
differences for this fight, or will we waste all our energy fighting among
ourselves?"
____________________ Epistle to the Midwives_______________________
Mothers and midwives have both been the victim of a well-organized
Hundred Years War against a safe and sane maternity policy in the US. A
100 years is plenty long enough to have tested out the theory that patience
and hope will bring about the necessary change. The unnecessary maternal
and perinatal mortality historically attributable to the loss &/or lack of a
midwifery-based policy of maternity care already reaches into the millions.
[1] At a rate of 31 maternal deaths per100,000 for Cesarean surgery versus
6 for spontaneous birth, childbearing women have a greater chance of dying
as a result of surgical childbirth than from breast cancer (26 per 100,000),
auto accidents (20 per 100,000) -- greater than even the most dangerous job
in the US (cab drivers homicide rate of 22 per 100,000).
More of what isn't working -- waiting, hoping, in-fighting,
divisiveness, etc. -- won't work either. The time has come for effective
coordinated action across the wide spectrum of political organizations. The
needs of childbearing women and babies do not permit us the "luxury" of
shunning one another based on differing religious beliefs and political
philosophies. If ever the biblical admonition to "Love one another" had a
place, it is here. We must concern ourselves with building bridges instead of
walls and that requires forging coalitions that are cooperative and
complementary. Of necessity this will include people who are on both sides
of the abortion debate.
But the MOST profound reason for raising above our differences in
regard to the abortion debate is that the US Supreme Court 1973 Roe v.
Wade abortion decision has become the lynch-pin in declaring the
autonomous practice of midwifery to be illegal in various states. The 1976
California Supreme Court Bowland Decision, which declared the practice
independent midwifery be a crime, hinged on a truly perverted interpretation
of Roe v. Wade. This bad decision for California has subsequently been cited
as a precedent by other states and the federal courts to dis-allow independent
midwifery (Illinois, Bechman & Perry, 1993, Julia Kessler-Lang, federal
appellant court, 1996).
The Bowland Decision interpreted Roe v. Wade as extending the
mother's "rights of privacy" to include the right to choose a first and second
trimester abortion while simultaneously asserting that once the fetus reached
the age of viability, the "interests" of the state in "protecting" the
viable fetus created a legal mandate for state control of all maternity practices and
practitioners. Under the banner of "protecting" babies from the supposedly
substandard and 2nd class care of independent midwives, the Bowland
Decision used the US Supreme Court abortion decision to extend the police
powers of the state to criminalize autonomous midwifery. The legal
assumption was (and still is) that obstetrical care is "safer" than midwifery
and thus the care of midwives can be prohibited, controlled, regulated and
criminalized. This is a bureaucratic way to say "midwives (and the crazy
mothers that choose them) kill babies" and that conventional medical care
saves babies from the substandard ministrations of independent midwives
AND mothers who are willing to harm their babies in order to have a "good
experience".
Roe v. Wade has become a deal made with the devil in which will
"permit" women to abort unwelcome pregnancies up to 24 weeks in return
for having the government take over our decision-making rights (a "father
knows best" philosophy) as soon as fetal viability is reached. Don't get me
wrong -- I am not making an argument for 3rd trimester abortion (or
abortion at any other time). It is just a recognition that this "reasoning" is
unreasonable and unjustifiable. The over-arching issue here is not merely
"reproductive freedoms" (often pejoratively interpreted and trivialized to
mean the "right" to do as we please, including let our babies die in ill-advised
home births) but simple, God-given autonomy of each of us as individuals.
The central question for me is this: If I cannot legally make the most
elemental choices about my sexual and reproductive life such choosing
where to give birth and who will attend me during this normal physiological
process (not to mention the issue of greater safer with midwifery care), then
what difference does it make that our democratic institutions "permit" me to
vote for the political candidate of my choice? "Democracy" without
individual autonomy is an illusion that becomes an excuse for
institutionalized violence against women and infants. It is both a national
scandal and a personal tragedy that needs to be addressed through public-
awareness campaigns and conscienceness- raising activities. The most basic
reproductive issue is still unresolved in regard to the criminalization of
home-based maternity care, court-ordered cesarean sections and forced
neonatal treatment without parental permission. One can not tell the
complete story of women's reproductive rights without including its
relationship to the criminalization of midwifery and the take-over of the very
core of our lives as women by the commercial interests of organized
medicine.
Criminalizing independent midwives is the door by which
autonomous midwifery itself is suppressed and eliminated. While CNMs
may not think this issue concerns them, it is this philosophy that underlies the
regulatory restrictions on nurse-midwifery, particularly in New York,
California and Illinois. The same states that are mis-using Roe v.
Wade/Bowland are the ones that make all licensed midwifery (CNMs &
direct-entry) dependent on "physician-supervision". These laws were
purposefully constructed by the medical establishment to make the doctor
culpable for the midwife's practice (as a "disincentive to home birth") and
thus virtually eliminate the LEGAL practice of domiciliary midwifery
(including free-standing birth centers) by midwives of all educational
background.
So no matter where we personally stand on the issues of abortion,
if you are a midwife or a healthy mother experiencing a normal pregnancy and
wish to use the statistically safer services of a midwife, or if you are a tax
payer or enrollee of a healthcare insurance plan paying the bills generated by
obstetrical services, dealing with the ramifications of Roe v. Wade is
compulsory. I would encourage us to find creative and compassionate ways
to come together and get on with the job.
My fervent prayer is that this is the LAST 100 years of this war
against common sense, one waged by broadcasting false propaganda while
carefully hiding the truth from the public. For the first time in 400 years, we
have a chance to rise above the forces of organized medicine and let the
truth be known. The Internet gives us the basic tools we need to circumvent
the media grid-lock enjoyed by the medical establishment and get the word
out. And the word is more than just "Midwifery". It is "safety" and
"cost-effectiveness" and "emotionally supportive" and "spiritually satisfying"
and "community-centered". The Word is Autonomous Midwifery as
practiced by midwives of all educational backgrounds and family-practice
physicians.
Warm Regards on a Hot Topic......
faith gibson, community midwife
You can e-mail Faith and read more of her eloquent writings on midwifery by going to our midwifery links section and clicking on the Good News Network
________________Citation #1__________________________________
"Into This Universe"; Viking Press, 1937, written for the lay public
Alan Frank Guttmacher, MD Associate in Obstetrics, John Hopkins University; Excerpts from Charter 4, "Safer Childbirth", p. 329
___________________________________________________________We have had a small but convincing demonstration by the Frontier Nursing Service of Kentucky of what the well-trained midwife can do in America. .... The midwives travel from case to case on horseback through the isolated mountainous regions of the State. There is a hospital at a central point, with a well-trained obstetrician in charge, and the very complicated cases are transferred to it for delivery.
In their first report they stated that they have delivered over 1000 women with only two deaths -- one from heart disease, the other from kidney disease. During 1931 there were 400 deliveries with no deaths. Dr. Louis Dublin, President of the American Public Health Association and the Third Vice-president and Statistician of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, after analyzing the work of the Frontier Nurses, made the following statement on May 9, 1932:" The study shows conclusively that the type of service rendered by the Frontier Nurses safeguards the life of the mother and babe. If such service were available to the women of the country generally, there would be a savings of 10,000 mothers' lives a year in the US, there would be 30,000 less stillbirths and 30,000 more children alive at the end of the first month of life."
_____________________________________________________________note: That was 70,000 unnecessary deaths year after year for several decades. From 1910, when the "midwife Problem" first resulted in the organized suppression of midwifery to the early 1940 when the medical advances of the Second World War (safer anesthesia, blood typing for safer blood transfusions and effective antibiotics) resulted in a big drop in mortality,approximately 2 million mothers and babies died unnecessarily as a result of this absurd situation.]
