by Ina May Gaskin
The Daily Beast

Excerpts:

Ask your average American what a midwife is and you’ll probably get a puzzled stare in return. Midwife? Isn’t that a kind of witch doctor, discarded by society with the dawn of modern medicine? Do midwives still exist today?

They do, of course—and I am living proof. Midwives have attended women in pregnancy and childbirth for thousands of years, across cultures. Yet midwives are far too rare in this country, particularly compared with nearly every other country in the world. The fact that they seem outmoded here illustrates a deeper problem: not only is the profession of midwifery at risk of dying out, but also the very process of giving birth the way nature intended seems on the brink of extinction. These are just a few of the disturbing trends women will be fighting when they take to the streets today, in honor of the International Day of the Midwife.

In the U.S., one in three babies is now born surgically, despite the World Health Organization’s recommendation that rates not exceed 10 percent in hospitals serving the general population, or 15 percent in hospitals serving high-risk cases. When C-section rates are too low, women and babies will pay with their lives, but the same result occurs when C-section rates climb too high. This is a lesson we have yet to learn in the U.S

According to the Centers for Disease Control, a woman giving birth today is more than twice as likely to die in childbirth as her mother was.

Read the full article here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-05/doctors-need-midwives-ina-may-gaskin-on-us-maternity-care-crisis/#

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