Kartemquin’s co-founder and artistic director, Gordon Quinn, discusses Camera # 1- used to shoot Home For Life, Thumbs Down, Marco and Parents
“Over the last half century maternity care has moved from community-based provision to hospital-based services, and there are real questions about where the gains and losses have been,” said one participant. Given the current rising birth rate, which is increasing by about 2% year-on-year – obstetric units were said to be “bursting at the seams”, the roundtable heard – and if women were just as safe at home or in a midwifery unit, and they preferred to be there, it made no sense for the assumption to continue that hospital was where they “ought” to be cared for during pregnancy and birth.
Source: Guardian
More US women choosing to use widwives over doctors
Pretty cool.
The report, published Monday in the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, analyzed two decades of CDC data that showed that a greater proportion of women are choosing to rely on midwives in what experts think is a direct reaction to rising rates of C-section births. Midwives approach birth differently than many physicians: they shy away from inducing labor in most situations, which can lead to a greater likelihood of cesarean delivery. Starting early in the prenatal period, they may take a more holistic approach, emphasizing diet. In labor, they spend much more time in the delivery room, encouraging a woman to try different positions or to walk around to get labor moving. “They have more patience,” says Declercq.
It’s great to see that people are being increasingly aware that they do have options and are seeking them
For more on women looking to give birth on their own terms, see Marco and The Chicago Maternity Center Story.
Ina May Gaskin assisting a woman at the Farm, Jane Montanaro, during a delivery
Gaskin says that because midwife-assisted home birth is illegal in many states and hospital birth comes with restrictions, many women are de facto coerced into surgery or other interventions they don’t need. For Gaskin, choice in birth remains a realm of reproductive freedom that mainstream feminism, until recently, has foolishly ignored. She thinks that women should seek not just the freedom to decide whether or not to have a baby, but how to have it.
(NYTimes)
For more on women demanding the freedom to choose how to give birth see Kartemquin’s 1970 film Marco and The Chicago Maternity Center Story from 1976.
