This hospital has a c-section rate that is well above what the World Health Organization deems a safe c-section rate; if women are consenting to a c-section right off the bat (not to mention fetal heart-rate monitoring, antibiotics, episiotomies, and epidurals!) regardless of whether one is actually medically indicated, it’s certainly blurring the lines between what’s medically necessary and the power of suggestion from a medical “authority.” Where does an individual’s right to make an informed choice begin and hospital legal policy end?
Mother’s Day Action 2010
On this mother’s day we want more than flowers and cards, we want all mothers (including poor mothers, undocumented mothers and young mothers) to have the power and the access to choose their birthing option.
Maternal and Infant mortality rates are alarmingly high in the U.S.*, particularly within communities of color. Research shows that holistic pre-natal care (including nutrition and health education) from early pregnancy on, as well as continuous birth support contribute to healthier outcomes for both mothers and babies. These options, inherent to the midwifery model of care, are not available to poor women (uninsured or on Medicaid) in Texas. Below is a list of ten reasons why Medicaid in Texas should cover midwifery:
10. Helps to prevent unneccesay interventions (technology, drugs, and surgery)
9. Provides continuous support (Midwives stay with you throughout labor and delivery)
8. Healthier babies
7. Promotes bonding with mother and child
6. Promotes breastfeeding
5. Supports mother’s and baby’s physical and emotional well-being
4. Cheaper prenatal, delivery, and postnatal care
3. Continuous prenatal and postnatal care
2. Safer birth for mother and baby
1. MOTHER HOLDS THE POWER (SHE HAS A MORE ACTIVE VOICE IN HER PREGNANCY AND BIRTH)
With that said, on May 9th, 2010, Mamas of Color Rising, in conjunction with Young Women United in Albuquerque, NM will be participating in a Mother’s Day Action to raise awareness about the benefits of midwifery as an accessible birthing option [via&via]
try being a working class, black mother radical activist and find a midwife to mentor you because you really want to be a midwife to the marginalized. really. try it. its not just the money. its the way that (white) midwives look at you and talk to you. the way they talk about your neighborhood. your culture. the way that they dismiss racism as ‘really being about classism’. and classism about ‘really being about education’. and education ‘really being about trying hard enough’. when in reality, racism is about racism, classism is about classism. and while these issues intersect, we cannot reduce racism to classism. i have experienced racism in situations where i was class privileged and well educated from midwives.
— mai’a commenting on Stuff White People Like: Talking About Birth [via]
Note first that all women who live long enough will at some point be women who can’t give birth and that some women are never able to give birth. Ged sees these women as something without purpose or without use. Then note how Ged defines women by their ability to give birth. This is revealing, because at its most extreme misogyny allows women now other area but the one in which men can’t substitute for them. In a sense, the definition of femininity becomes the ability to give birth and this is then the totality of what it means to be a woman. In such an extreme case masculinity is pretty much everything else; all other abilities, characteristics and traits. Only female sexuality and fertility and practical tasks associated with them will be viewed as properly feminine.
anthropophagous
Archive Audio Images RSS FeedThis is just a collection of things I think are neat.
A general overview of 'things I think are neat':abandonment/the post-industrial midwest, anarchism (syndicalism, insurrectionalism, etc), race/ethnicity (esp. defining/constructing the boundaries of whiteness), gender, class (talking/thinking about class generally seems to be an underrated activity), health care (access to, the experience of obtaining, etc), art, science fiction, punk music, conservative talk radio and anthropology (which probably incorporates almost everything else about people).
