Wow! I am so excited to hear about all you have accomplished! You are pretty inspiring yourself. I feel honored and delighted to know that I have been part of your journey. Please keep us posted on your activities.

-- Henci 

I hear you, but I think it is all too easy to blame the victim. We live in a culture that gives women the subtle and not-so-subtle message that their bodies are incompetent to grow and birth their babies and that labor is an unendurably painful experience. Conventional obstetric management is one long effort to pull the rug out from under the feet of pregnant women. Every visit basically consists of a bunch of tests and measurements asking “Is there something wrong?” “No?” “Come back next month and we’ll do it all over again. The obstetrician's skills and interventions, they are told, are all that stands between their babies and the ravages of that incompetence, while an epidural will spare them the agonies of labor. Better yet, cesarean surgery is the no-muss, no-fuss, pain-free panacea for it all. Why should we be surprised when women have no confidence in themselves and are willing to swallow that message whole?

You have to remember that things were much simpler back in the '60s and '70s. Birth educators and activists were bringing good news to women: "No, you don't have to be zonked out of your mind on narcotics if you don't want to be," and "Yes, you should be able to have a loved one with you in labor." Both of those messages were common sense ones easily understood by. But electronic fetal monitoring with the false promise of perfect babies and epidurals with the equally false promise of pain-free labor with no downside shifted the ground. Now we are bringing bad news: "No, all those interventions the doctor that you trust tells you guarantee a healthy baby (or, at least, the ob can't guarantee a healthy baby if you refuse them, which amounts to the same thing) do more harm than good," and "Yes, epidurals relieve pain effectively, which narcotics never did, but they carry a whole host of problems in their train." Why on earth would they believe us? It’s like criticizing your daughter’s awful boyfriend. A few teens might listen; most will just get mad at you.

Add on to that that we are well into the second generation of high cesarean surgery rates. They seem normal to women today. Many of their mothers and aunts and cousins had them as have their sisters and friends. Small wonder that today's women aren't listening to us. But let's put the blame where it belongs: squarely on the shoulders of the obstetricians who have successfully promoted a system of management that benefits them but is provably neither safe nor effective and is incredibly costly to boot.

For more on this topic, I recommend Marsden Wagner’s book Born in the U.S.A. and Jennifer Block’s book Pushed. They are both great exposés

-- Henci

I look forward to hearing your adventures.

--Henci

Welcome to the ranks of birth rights activists! One of the wonderful things that I see happening is that the new wave of activists come with a wide range of professional skills. The wave of which I was a part in the early 1980s, when the cesarean surgery rate started to skyrocket, did not, which was a definite handicap. But now we have lawyers, and doctors, and communications people, and accountants and tech savvy people and so on. Their knowledge and experience are real assets in making change, considering the forces arrayed against us.

Let me think (write?) out loud some ideas that would use your skills.

·         Many grassroots groups are looking for Advisory Board members who bring special knowledge and credibility to the organization. Think about volunteering in this capacity for ICAN or CIMS or Citizens for Midwifery, and there are probably others who would welcome you.

·         Whenever an article appears in the newspaper or magazine that gets it wrong, write a letter to the editor. The M.D. after your name will boost credibility. Monitor the medical journals and do the same. There too, the M.D. will give you, I think, a better chance of being published. That could be a full-time occupation right there.

·         Join “Physicians for Midwives,” a doctors’ group that supports the Midwives Model of Care. The URL is http://www.well.com/user/zuni/pfm.html.  (Note: I haven’t had direct contact with anyone from this group for several years. I searched on the name to get the website so it is possible it is defunct, but the website is still up.)

·         Start (or join) a Birth Network. These are grassroots local groups looking to improve maternity care in their communities. You can find out more about Birth Networks by clicking on the “Advocacy” tab on the Lamaze home page at www.Lamaze.org.