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----- Original Message -----
From: Power, Emma
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 11:37 AM
Subject: RE: Hi there Liz ..
Thanks for your email ... just wondering is there any particular conference or anything coming up in Brisbane that I should notify our Queensland office about?? It would be good if there is some sort of a "hook" for them to follow the story through. Regards, Emma.
-----Original
Message-----
Dear Emma,
First, let me tell you how happy I am for you!!
Second, a big hello to Monica who will birth her baby soon, and thank her for the contact with you and the media.
The issue here is about humanizing birth and is not unique to Australia. There is a growing awareness, in the developed world in particular, that medicalized childbirth is dehumanizing to women, damaging to future generations, through drugged and traumatic birth, and harmful to the environment by way of disrespect and disregard for nature and its laws.
Maternity Care Services are in crisis in Australia, and throughout the developed world. Approximately 80% of women can birth physiologically, and the World Health Organization (1985), and I quote, recommends "that midwives are the most cost effective and appropriate primary care givers for all childbearing women in all instances and in all settings, and home is the most appropriate birth setting. There should be community controlled, out of hospital birth centers for women seeking an alternative to the home setting. Obstetricians should not be responsible for primary care in childbirth."
As I see it, the issue is not about midwives. It is about women and future generations. Women have rights; yet, in the current medicalization of childbirth their rights have been subjugated. The unborn child also has rights; the right to a gentle, non-traumatic birth and peace to be with its mother, undisturbed.
Numerous investigations of childbirth practices in Australia, the latest being the senate inquiry, 'Rocking the Cradle" in 1999 to which the government objected, and follow up recommendations from the National Health & Medical Research Council, have been ignored by government. Women have been pushing for the right to humanized birth since about 1940. The medical hegemony is so dominant and so powerful that change seems almost impossible.
Those who care will not give up. It is important how a baby enters the world. It is important how a woman births her baby. The birth process is so potent, and women never forget. Like industrialized farming, industrialized childbirth has serious implications for the health and psychological welfare of future generations, nature and the environment.
Enough. About the video; its 6 minutes long, with music and lyrics especially written. The midwife is Vicki Chan: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. She was a homebirth midwife for 14 years and recently had to give up because of the professional indemnity insurance issue. She is a spiritual soul with four children of her own. Nic Edmonstone, the multi-media expert, [EMAIL PROTECTED] inherently knew how to birth her two babies without medical interference. Specialist medical intervention is an essential component of maternity care services; their training as surgeons and obstetricians is about five years and that's where there their expertise and training should lie; specialist, consultative services available only on demand.
Vicki's number is 0754948554.
Emma, I'm 53 years old; and was indoctrinated to the medical model of health care at just over 17 years of age. That's a long time. I've been a midwife since 1975; and it has taken a long time to unlearn what I was taught. Like others of my ilk, I want to change maternity care services from medicalization to encompass the spiritual and holistic side of childbirth. I'm fed up with the protocols, the standardization which have no benefit except to the commercial interests of pharmaceutical and technological companies. I'm fed up with women being abased. I'm fed up with the interventions. And yes, I do not like hospitals for birthing women. Hospitals are for the sick and injured. Not for healthy women undergoing a physiological process, separated from their family and friends when they need support, comfort and rest. As someone said, 'pizzas are delivered, babies are birthed.'
Some websites for you to peruse:-
love, Liz Mc
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