Month: August 2008

Birth Center available to lease or own in Southern Virginia

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Via The True Face of Birth

NATURAL BIRTH CENTER: Lease or Own

Could my challenging circumstance be another’s wonderful opportunity?

I opened the Natural Birth Center in October of 2007. It is one of only two birth centers in Virginia, and is operated currently by licensed CPMs. It is located in Buena Vista, near Southern Virginia University. Myself and my midwifery partner, as Rockbridge Midwifery Care, have been practicing from there, making great progress both responding to and generating a good deal of interest in the region around birth center and home birth.

Due to my husband working in California, I made the enormously difficult decision to leave the practice and reunite my family there. My midwifery partner, Emily Friar, CPM, LM., plans to continue as Rockbridge Midwifery Care and scale back to a homebirth-only practice with an office elsewhere. This leaves open the question as to what to do with the beloved Natural Birth Center building/home.

Ideally, the Natural Birth Center could be leased (at a negotiable rate) to a midwife, as is, set up and functional. This makes it an opportunity to begin your own birth center practice with much lower start-up costs, in an established location. See the tour at http://www.rockbridgemidwifery.com, or contact me for photos. It looks even nicer currently. There is the possibility of a birth cottage or two being eventually added–replacing the rear sheds–a privacy fence and an outdoor play area for visiting children.

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Support At Your Cervix–it only takes seconds!

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My Idea

The great documentary in the making, At Your Cervix, needs your help! They are part of a contest at ideablob.com and if they get enough votes they might be eligible to win 10,000 toward finishing their film. A reminder about this great project:

The documentary At Your Cervix explores the connection between the way medical and nursing students are taught pelvic exams and the reality that most women experience them as painful and disempowering. The film breaks the silence around unethical methods used by medical and nursing schools to teach students how to perform pelvic exams; the most egregious being on unconsenting, anesthetized women. The film highlights the Gynecological Teaching Associates, women who teach exams using their own bodies.

Help us start a movement to end the exploitation of vulnerable patients, to demand transparency in medical education and to improve painful exams. See our trailer: http://www.atyourcervixmovie.com.

We will use $10,000 to pay for editing costs, color correction, a sound mix, our composer and other post-production costs. This film has been an absolute labor of love and a grassroots effort to change a system that puts women’s bodies at risk, humiliates and disregards patients, and teaches students that it’s not important to get informed consent. We need funds to finish this film, get it out into the world and create change. Post production is costly and the only thing holding us up is lack of finishing funds. Please support this very important project! Vote At Your Cervix and contribute to conversations about how pelvic exams can be more respectful and comfortable.

Click on the box above to vote!

Action: Rally to save midwifery at Miami Dade community college MONDAY

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PLEASE COME HELP SAVE THE MIDWIFERY PROGRAM AT MIAMI DADE!

YOUR SUPPORT IS DESPERATELY NEEDED!

As some of you may know, the Midwifery Program at Miami-Dade Community College has been closed. This cancellation has come as a complete shock to the students who were accepted into this program, back in may. Despite adequate enrollment and apparently sufficient funding, the college has decided to unfairly close this program. The College has cited lack of funding as one of the main reasons for the program’s
closure. We think there is something else going on.

These students are ready and eager to start their program, as it was offered and promised to them! Some of them have quit their jobs and prepared to relocate to Miami, only to find shortly before classes were to begin, that the program was being closed.

Despite repeated efforts, Dr. Padron, College President, has refused to meet with the student. Please join us to help them in getting their voices heard.

The students are now planning a Rally to Save the Midwifery Program on Monday August 25th at 10:00a.m. The rally will be held at the office of the President on the MDC Wolfson Campus, 300 N.E. 2nd Ave, Suite 1401 on the fourth floor of Building #1 Miami, FL 33132.

So please….if you’ve never participated in a rally, let this be your first! We NEED you. Gather all of your people. Make signs proclaiming the importance of midwives. Please bring yourselves and your beautiful children to the rally in order that everyone see and hear how important this is issue is to us and our community!

Please contact me at 305.975.6227 or at motherpath@aol.com if you need more information on this rally or the history of the cancellation of this program.

I would also love to hear from those of you who are planning to attend!

Thank you,

Michelle

Downtown parking: there is a $5 lot next to building #3 on NE. 4th St, a parking deck on NE 5th St, and another deck, Building #7 at 100 NE 2nd Ave (free for students,staff and anyone coming to register for
classes!!) also nearby metered parking at Bayside. A good bet is taking Metrorail to Government Center and the the Inner Loop to the College North stop, it’s closesest to Building #1

Southern Comfort

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I saw this documentary, Southern Comfort, a few months ago and have been meaning to post about it ever since. It was a really touching story, and an interesting look into the life of a few transgender people living in the Deep South. The focus of the movie is a trans man, Robert Eads. It’s about his story and battle with ovarian cancer (which he eventually succumbs to) and the people in his life, including his partner, Lola, pictured here.

What makes Robert’s story particularly remarkable is that he had tried to get a hysterectomy during his transition, but his doctors refused. The procedure would have saved his life, as he eventually was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. His other friends in the film also talk about the transphobia they faced in receiving necessary medical care. It’s a serious issue, and not just for trans people living in the rural south.

It’s a great documentary, I highly recommend it. Southern Comfort is also the name of a yearly trans convention that happens in Atlanta, Georgia.

One main cause of health disparities? Racism.

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This is not surprising.

In 2004, black women were nearly four times as likely to die in childbirth as white women nationwide, and had a maternal death rate of 34.7 per 100,000 live births compared to 9.3 deaths per 100,000 live births for white women.

I’ve talked about maternal mortality before, and how the US is at the bottom of the rankings for the developing world. You also probably already know that women of color face disproportionately high rates of infant mortality, low birth weights and maternal mortality. This article discusses how a new set of reports called the Safe Motherhood reports try to delve deeper into understanding why these risk factors vary. There are the obvious ones we could come up with (no MPH degree necessary) like poverty, lack of access to prenatal care, stress and racism. But these studies are finding something more puzzling:

But one chart shows that black women with adequate prenatal care died at a rate comparable to that of white women with inadequate prenatal care — which hints at a medical mystery a small field of researchers are trying to explain. While some analysts emphasize a lack of health care and poverty to explain high maternal mortality rates among black women, newer studies have indicated that regardless of a black woman’s income and education levels, black women are more likely to die having a baby than white and Latina women.

When we discuss health disparities it’s super important to talk about RACISM. Why? Because a fact like that one above can easily lead to conclusions about the genetic predisposition to maternal mortality, for example. So instead of furthering delving into an understanding of how racism and poverty might affect these women (even if it’s not the poverty that they themselves are currently living under), one could argue that black women are simply predisposed to risk factors that can increase the risk of maternal mortality.

Similar arguments are being made about things like heart disease, or diabetes, for the Black community as well as Latinos. I think we need to be clear about what these health disparities tell us: that racism exists and has a serious and LASTING effect on the experiences of people of color. This effect is so powerful that not even improving ones class status via income or education can erase it. That’s one side of it. The other side of it is that even educated, wealthy women of color still experience the effects of racism on their health and wellbeing. And when I say racism, I don’t just mean prejudice between individual people. I also mean institutional racism, which establishes systems that favor certain racial groups over others. Like the prison industrial complex. Or the public education system. These things have an impact on the overall health of a community.

I could get into a whole diatribe (similar to ones I’ve gotten into around gender difference) about the social construction and lack of biological link to race difference. But I won’t, because I think overall we are beyond that. Doesn’t mean sometimes these things don’t sometimes need restating. To conclude: it’s important to study health disparities and race, so we can document where more work needs to be done. But the point is not to make essentializing statements about the differences between the races. Definitely not.

Note: the above article did a good job of talking about the social factors affecting this, I just used it as an opening to talk more about this issue.

State Department discriminates against Latino citizens delivered by midwives

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Via The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (full disclosure: that’s my day job and I wrote this press release)

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that some Latino citizens in the Rio Grande Valley on the US/Mexico border are being denied access to their citizenship rights based on documentation issues. Their citizenship is being called into question (despite years of residence and employment in the United States, and even successful background checks) due to their birth to midwives in private residences.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health believes this is a racist and unfair practice, which leaves these individuals scrambling to prove citizenship with other documents, where for others a birth certificate is sufficient. This practice unfairly targets Latino citizens on the border and those who were born to parteras or midwives in private residences, a common practice among Latinos. Further, the fact that once additional documentation has been provided some individuals are still being denied makes it clear that the State Department is discriminating against these individuals along the border in Texas.

Join the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health in decrying this discriminatory practice, so we can ensure that all US citizens regardless of race, nationality or place of childbirth are granted access to their rights.

Full press release available here.

Cross-posted at Feministing

An Open Letter to Alix Olson

MZP1 Comment

I found this open letter (via video) to Alix Olson at Questioning Transphobia.

It’s also appropriate because this week marks the beginning of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (aka Michfest). It’s a festival that has been going on for 33 years, an intentional community that is built out of nothing in Michigan and creates a space for womyn to come together and celebrate music.

I’ve never been, but the festival has also caused a lot of controversy around it’s gender policy. Specifically, trans women feel they are being kept from attending the festival via the “womyn born womyn” policy. There was an incident in the past where a trans woman was removed from the festival when it was discovered (in the communal shower area) that her genitalia did not match the festival goers idea of female genitalia.

In response, Camp Trans was founded, a concurrent festival and protest of Michfest. It happens right across the road and many trans people and allies attend that festival instead. Julia Serrano has written extensively about this exclusion (including in the piece I linked last week) as have other feminists and activists.

Alix Olson, along with many other female artists and musicians perform at Michfest every year, which I assume is the reason she is the audience for this open letter. I actually had the opportunity to meet her at a performance she gave at American University last year, and I asked her about the Michfest controversy. Her response was that of all the conversations she had heard over the years about trans exclusion at the festival, the most productive or important ones had actually happened AT Michigan.

That might be a cop-out, and I know from talking to friends who have gone to the festival that it’s complicated since many of them really appreciate the space and community it creates. I personally think the festival should be open to people who identify as women (or womyn), and if there are issues with safety or harrassment (which seems to be a fear) then they should be dealt with directly, not via discriminatory policies.

Cross-posted at Feministing

C-section rate in NYC up 24% in 6 years

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Crazy. Choices in Childbirth and the New Space for Women’s Health have partnered in collecting this data and getting it out into the media.

You can see a video, including a graphic about c-section rates broken down by borough, at NY1.

Choices in Childbirth has a pdf with all the stats. Just as an example here are the stats for just two of the hospitals in Manhattan. Each percentage represents the rates as they increased each year beginning in 2000 going to 2006.  

New York Downtown Hospital 11.1 % 13.5 % 13.3 % 14.2 % 18.4 % 18.8 % 21.6 %

Bellevue Hospital 18.4 % 18.5 % 19.8 % 20.9 % 22.6 % 25.2 % 27.8 %

Just as a friendly reminder, the World Health Organization recommends that the cesarean section rate for industrialized nations should not exceed 15%.

This is why NYC needs things like the New Space for Women’s Health:

Friends of the Birth Center announces the launch of the New Space for Women’s Health, a project to create a center for birth and wellness in New York City. We’re beginning a fresh dialogue with women about changing birth and women’s health care in our city. Join us in this important conversation as we plan a new beginning, in Chelsea, 2010.

Thanks to Rebecca for the link

Protest the closing of Miami Dade Midwifery Program

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From an activist in Miami:

We need more midwives, and you can help!

There will be a rally at the campus this Friday to protest the unfair cancellation of the program.
Press coverage is expected.

    When: Friday, August 8th, at 10:00 am
    Where: Miami Dade Medical Campus, room 1352.
                    950 NW 20th St, Miami, FL 33127
    Contact: Melissa  305 305 6927

You can also write a letter to the school, more details after the jump. 

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Midwifery programs at risk

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News today from Miami-Dade College of the closing of their midwifery program. Apparently they decided to shut the program down due to enrollment issues and financing. It’s really sad considering how few midwives there are and how we need WAY more of them to keep pushing this birth process in a different direction. Even just from the financial side, midwives save money.

Via Choice Words