Categories: For Midwives

A PRACTITIONER PERSPECTIVE by Faith Gibson LM, CPM, in the September 2011 Birth (Volume 38, Issue 3, pages 266–268, September 2011). An excerpt in which Faith Gibson explains why she wrote the article follows.

"Between the extremes of obstetrical nursing in an era of segregation and scopolamine, and my life now as a midwife and activist, I studied the history of childbirth practices in the United States, paying particular attention to how and why we came to use this interventionist system on healthy women. Based on these insights, I’d like to offer my perspective on our aging 20th century maternity care system, keeping in mind that maternity care is ultimately judged by its results—the number of mothers and babies who graduate from its ministrations as healthy, or healthier, than when they started."