If you are pregnant in Alabama and you’d like to birth at home, you have every right to do so. But don’t expect to do it with the provider of your choice. Midwifery is illegal in Alabama, as it is in 25 other states. The 2009 PushSummit in Birmingham this week will address this and much more.
I
challenge every health care provider to provide the informed consent of two marginalized, but essential, areas of women’s health care: abortion
and midwifery.
Georgia’s Community-Base Doula Program has produced some amazing results, including c-section rates nearly half the national rate and breastfeeding initiation rates 25% greater than the national average.
Reproductive and sexual health and rights advocates must be concerned with the full gamut of access issues – including choice in childbirth, which is critical to women’s health and well-being and should be included in health care reform measures.
A new study uncovers more reasons for women to consider their childbirth options and to fight for their right to thorough, unbiased and accurate information when thinking about what kind of birth for which they’d like to plan.
Thanks to a history of expansive access to midwifery care and a number of big legislative gains, low-income women in Washington State now have more birthing options than most women around the country.
This Mother’s Day, instead of lining up on one side of the breast- vs. bottle-feeding debate or another, let’s question why society isn’t providing mothers with more options to make the decisions mamas believe are best for them and their babies.
Upwardly-mobile moms may finally be catching on to the benefits of midwifery and homebirth, but low-income women are still firmly planted in the hospital, most often with medicalized births overseen by doctors.
A bill in the Washington state Senate seeks to shut down the only association providing liability insurance to professional midwives, putting midwives in this state out of business and denying women one more option for safe childbirth.
While pregnant women’s lack of access to basic medical facilities in India is entrenched, social attitudes around the accepted role of women as childbearers worsen maternal health in the country.
