Check out my post on Feministing about the commercialization of gay marriage. I highly recommend looking at the comments, it stirred up some really interesting discussion.
Month: March 2007
Midwifery/Doula News Round-up
Here is a quick summary of recent news about midwives and doulas in the US:
Story about an infant fatality at a homebirth in Massachusetts and the politics surrounding the home vs. hospital debate.
Births with midwives increasing!
Colorado midwifery group going strong with 9000th birth.
Advocates are trying to pass a bill to legalize homebirth in Alabama.
Two midwifery centers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area closing because of financial problems due to the high cost of insurance. Sad.
Spotlight on cool doulas in Albuquerque, NM. This one has a ridiculous intro:
When Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, God told Eve that she and all women to come would bear their children in pain. It’s too bad Eve didn’t have a doula to help her in labor.
Comments welcome!
Facing Race: Define Justice. Make Change.
I participated in a really interesting conference last week, entitled Facing Race. Sponsored by the Applied Research Center, it brought together academics, politicians, organizers and activists to discuss racial justice.
I was psyched to participate, particularly because I love talking about reproductive justice work outside of the reproductive rights spaces. The whole point of what we’re trying to do is emphasize the connections between movements, and moving beyond the world of single issue activism. The other side has gotten it right–they’ve figured out how to all be on the same team: the anti-immigrant people, the anti-choice people, the anti-peace people, the anti-sex people and the anti-gay rights people. And the big problem is: we’re not. Instead, we progressives fight for airtime for OUR issue (which has to be THE issue), and the other side wins.
So this conference brought together people from different worlds, with a focus on race and racial disparities. I participated in an awesome panel about sexual health and communities of color, and we were able to have a really dynamic conversation about some key issues. What does the pro-choice movement look like in communities of color? How can we organize around sexual health in these communities? How can we broaden the conversation beyond just abortion rights, to talk about things like the rights of welfare mothers, HIV/AIDs, research, new technologies and birth rights? How can we include people who don’t identify as feminist, or pro-choice?
The other great thing about the conference was the discussion of the war in Iraq. While obviously a progressive issue, it’s not one that gets any airtime in reproductive rights spaces. The speakers at this conference were really intent on talking about the war as a racialized one, and emphasizing that social justice movements will go nowhere without an end to the war in Iraq. That’s a pretty strong statement but a powerful one. We really do have to keep in mind how the foreign policy decisions our government makes influence progressive movements in this country. Like the Global Gag Rule and domestic abortion advocacy.
One important thing I learned: it’s not enough to simply TALK about people of color, or women of color, and how their experiences differ. We have to continually highlight the moments where racism is a motivating factor–and call it out as such. Theories about the biological differences between races and individualism are used by the other side to de-emphasize the role that institutional racism plays in shaping our communities, in holding our communities back, and we have to combat this by continually calling it like it is–particularly when it comes to the racist policies that are being implemented by our current administration.
Check out the comment from radical doula/midwife Rebecca!
Just wanted to point you all to the comment made by fellow radical doula/midwife Rebecca. Click on the Radical doula??? page above, or click here (scroll to bottom).
Thanks Rebecca! It’s great to here from other radical women out there, and I appreciate your comment about how your own birthing experience has changed your ideas about birth and your doula work. I, being childless (with no current plans for motherhood), think about this issue alot and try to approach my ideas about birth with a openness and flexibility that reflects my understanding that my ideas are not the only ideas. I can only work from what my own lived experience has taught me, while appreciating the lived experiences of others, and attempting to facilitate an open dialogue for these issues.
Are you a radical doula or midwife? Post something and let me know you’re out there!
Did this actually happen?
(I apologize that this is not directly related to the topics I usually cover here. I just had to write about this.)
True story: I am riding a particular downtown subway home, late on a Thursday evening (around 2:30am), all the way from one far-away borough to my home in another. Due to exhaustion and a long subway ride, I fall asleep. Because the subway is almost empty (there are maybe 5 other passengers in the car), I stretch my legs out across the seats next to me.
About five stops from my destination, I am awoken by a tall male cop telling me that “I can’t do that.” In my sleepy state of confusion, I quickly sit up, not knowing what is going on. The police officer then asks me to stand up and step off the train (this is not my final destination). I say with confusion, “Can’t I just go home? I’m only a few stops away.” He repeats, “Please step off the train.”
As I leave the train car and enter the station, I hear a series of gasps behind me, presumably other passengers who are as astonished as I am. The police officer then proceeds to interrogate me, without really explaining the reason I have been removed from the train. As the doors close and the train moves on, I sigh, knowing that this altercation has just added at least 30 minutes to my already long trip home. But my situation only gets worse, as I sit down on a bench and continue to answer the police officers questions: “Where are you going? Where do you live? Do you have identification?”
He begins to talk over his radio, and I still have no idea what is really going on. Three more uniformed police officers come over, and at this point I am surrounded. Now, let me just clarify that I was neither intoxicated nor doing anything more threatening than sleeping on the subway, apparently taking up too much space. Apparently this was enough to warrant the involvement of FOUR police officers.
The cop proceeded with what turned out to be a background check, to see if I had any warrants for my arrest or outstanding tickets. Since when does sleeping on the subway correlate with criminal behavior? I felt completely belittled and distrusted, being treated as a criminal for doing something that I was not even aware was a violation. I finally ask for clarification about what my crime was, and one of the other three cops standing around me shows me his violation book with a paragraph highlighted about taking up more than one subway seat. Never before had I seen anything of the sort listed.
After what felt like a ridiculously long amount of time (and reassurance that in fact, there were no outstanding warrants for my arrest), the cop gave me what he called a “summons,” which amounted to a $50 ticket or an appearance in court. For taking up more than one seat on a mostly empty train at 3am on a weekday. I asked if there was any type of warning for this, since it was my first offense. The cop gruffly responded, this is the warning, it’s either this or arrest. Apparently my offense was agregious enough to merit handcuffs and a lock up.
An hour later, I finally arrive at my apartment, frazzled and full of questions.
Shout out for a cool book: Nobody Passes
I went to a reading yesterday at Bluestockings (awesome radical feminist bookstore) by the editor and some of the contributors to this new book called Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Comformity, published by Seal Press.
Not only was there an awesome crowd, but Rocko Bulldagger and Helen Boyd (author of My Husband Betty) both read from their pieces about passing and gender. What’s very cool about the book is that it tries to talk about passing outside the context of gender as well as within it, including articles about ability, race and immigration status among other things. Oh yeah, and Mattilda Bernstein, the editor of the book, is also a radical rockstar. (She even has her own blog about the book and tour)
Another connection between anti-abortion and anti-midwifery movements
So I haven’t actually read this book yet, but Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon did a great summation of it for their new book club. I just wanted to share that Leslie Reagan, the author of When Abortion Was a Crime, makes the historical connection between the crackdown on abortion rights and the medical movement to eradicate midwifery in the late 19th century. Shocker!
A more detailed timeline of the history of midwifery in the US.
I promise to explicate if I get around to reading this book, which judging from Amanda’s review seems interesting and does a good job of trying to pull abortion from its “issue silo” (making the connections to other social justice issues). I’m currently reading Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam, which is really good…
Kick-ass Radical Doulas: The Prison Doula Project
So I am starting a series called “Kick ass radical doulas.” Periodically I will highlight awesome doula programs or doulas that I learn about or meet, particularly ones that focus on providing doula services to communities of women who REALLY need the support. Like my first group, who works with incarcerated women.
So I’m inaugurating this series with a shout-out to the Birth Attendents, an amazing group of super-radical doulas who provide support to incarcerated women giving birth in Western Washington State. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of these awesome doulas, and I think they typify what it means to be a radical doula. The work they do with incarcerated women (who regularly are shackled during labor and delivery) is truly inspiring. I have the particular pleasure to befriend Christy Hall, who is an awesome radical doula, and was actually the person I had some of my original conversations with about radical doulas. Meet these awesome women here.
Not only do they run this Prison Doula Project, they also have a community education project:
Our community education project links our vital work inside prisons to the greater issues surrounding incarceration and works toward creating pathways of knowledge for western Washington communities about incarceration and its effects.
Rock on. Want to support these awesome doulas and their work? Then give them some money. Or volunteer.
If you have know any doulas or doula programs that you think I should highlight for this series, email me at radicaldoula@gmail.com.
TV to blame for increased c-section rate?
I just found this article, in the British newspaper The Independent, that their “Maternity Csar” is placing the blame for Britain’s increasing cesarean section rate on television coverage of birth.
The IoS reported last week that Caesarean sections had risen from 9 per cent of all deliveries in 1980, to nearly 23 per cent by 2004/05, well above the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation of 15 per cent. Ms Lewis’s comments come in the wake of several shows depicting Caesarean sections, including ER and Emmerdale. She said: “I blame TV programmes. Every time, you see a pregnancy on television it seems to go wrong and ends up with a Caesarean section. You never see a woman having a normal delivery.
This is a claim that I have been making for awhile now, and although I cannot really comment on British television, I think this is exceedingly true for US TV, particularly in the wake of the Psuedo-documentary Reality TV boom. There are a number of these medical documentary series, particularly on stations like The Discovery Channel and TLC.
Check out one particularly frightening example:
No wonder women are afraid to give birth. And one last thing, our c-section rate is even worse than the UK, at almost 30%. Thank you reality TV.
New Abortion Technologies=Woman Controlled Care
Last week was the 51st Annual UN Commission on the Status of Women, being held in New York City. I attended a parallel event to the commission, entitled Abortion Providers Attitudes toward Women, hosted by the Guttmacher Institute, Ipas, Human Rights Watch and Gynuity Health Projects.
It was a great panel, but there was one particular presentation that stuck out for me, and seem to have the most relevance here. Dr. Beverly Winikoff, the President of Gynuity Health Projects gave a talk entitled “Giving Women Choices: Access to New Technologies in Abortion.” I particularly appreciated the logic with which she began her discussion, which focused on the new technologies for “medication abortion” or the abortion pill (aka RU-486). She explained that we need to keep in mind that the technology exists such that presumably all women could simply have a set of pills in their medicine cabinets at home which could be taken if she had a late period, or discovered she was pregnant. She went on to say that it is a complicated and overtly hostile political climate which has prevented this from happening, even five years after the introduction of these abortion options. The nuances of this opposition are interesting, and very related to the pharmaceutical industry as well as provider issues, and even logic that argues that these technologies make abortion too easy.
What I think is interesting about this, and what connects it to the birth activist movement, is its focus on woman-centered care. Actually, this idea is not really woman-centered care, but woman controlled care. Because of such intense barriers and restrictions placed on access to reproductive health care services, particularly in relation to abortion, activists have begun to argue for policies which allow women to decide when to use them—removing the intermediary that is the physician or clinician. We have seen this effort with Emergency Contraception, which has recently been approved for access without a prescription (at least for women over 18). Here we see women taking control and autonomy over their reproductive health, with a possibility of making their own decisions in the privacy of their own home. I see a strong connection between this and the midwifery movement, which works to place the woman at the center of care, and the midwife-woman relationship one based on equality and mutual respect, rather than hierarchy and control.
Obviously there are drawbacks to these modes of access, mainly when the woman may not be seeing a provider at all. Both in the case of EC and the abortion pill, if a woman has had unprotected sex, she may be at risk of exposure to an STI and this necessitates follow up with a health care provider. It’s also easy to see why the anti-choicers are doing whatever they can to stop these technologies from becoming accessible, since that would conflict with their ceaseless fight to win back control of women’s bodies.
Radical Doula 