Me, a birth activist?

There are some politics I would as soon not be involved in. I never wanted to be a birth activist. I just want to birth my babies in peace. Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice. Just like making love in Orwell’s 1984, birthing anywhere other than a hospital (something I did recently) is a political act in today’s climate.

I was around nine or ten when I first heard about birth by C-section. I remember being told that once a woman delivered by C-section, all her babies ever after had to be born by C-section. Fortunately, that is not true, at least not in the physical sense. It’s called a vaginal birth after ceasarean or VBAC. Right off the bat I can name five women I know personally who have had a VBAC. It’s something many women want and will go miles out of their way to get.

If you happened to live within a hundred miles of Simi Valley, CA, you could have a VBAC by hiring Marcia McCulley to be your midwife. The only practitioner in a 200 mile radius to “allow” her clients to have VBACs, mothers-to-be came to her from all over California and even from other states. I know of one woman who drove 110 miles one way for all her prenatal appointments so she could have her baby vaginally rather than get cut open again. And she got what she wanted too. In fact, Marcia McCulley enjoyed a 100% success rate on VBACs for two years. I guess with that kind of track record it just got to be too difficult for the obstetricians at the hospital across the street to convince their patients that VBACs were either impossible or dangerous.

So, the OB group at the Simi Valley Hospital filed some complaints and got both the Medical Board of California and the Board of Registered Nursing to get her license suspended pending hearings. Basically, Marcia McCulley’s practice is shut down for the time being. So, where are all the mothers-to-be in the area wanting VBACs to go? Well, they can either have an unassisted birth or perhaps they could move to a remote location and call on a midwife like Deva Burgess to attend their births. In other words, because of the actions taken against Marcia McCulley, their options are even more severely limited than they were to begin with. The most likely path they’ll take is to go to the hospital and resign themselves to another C-section. Some of them might even believe it’s ultimately for the best. How very sad.

And this isn’t just limited to California.  There’s a midwife in Iowa named Melanie Moore who is being charged with practicing medicine without a license (HT:  The Mommy Blawg), a sort of catch-all accusation traditional medicine practitioners get when someone doesn’t like what they are doing.  My midwife could be next.

This witch hunt against midwives is something that all of us, no matter what our childbirth preferences are, need to be concerned about.  This isn’t about a bunch of hippie mommas giving birth out in nature (though I really have nothing against that).  It’s about the quality of care every mother and baby receive no matter where she gives birth.  Even if you prefer to give birth inside a hospital, do you really want to entrust your care to an obstetrician who claims with a straight face that a VBAC is impossible or dangerous when the midwife across the street has been successfully helping women do it for several years?  Will you and your baby really be safer because the OB attending your birth made it his business to get that midwife shut down on trumped up charges?

The hospitals and medical boards are trying to shut down the competition.  If they succeed, then they can get away with providing birthing women even more substandard care than they already offer.  That’s why all reproductive women and those who love them need to be concerned about the fate of midwives.  This is why I am becoming a birth activist.