the feminist librarian reads

this tumblr is a companion site for the blog the feminist librarian. this is where I post quick links to the stuff I've been reading and quotes that catch my eye.


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instead of talking about home-based births are “unsafe”…

…we could talk about making them safer for birth parent and child.

We could talk about making home birth more widely legal, so the practice wasn’t driven underground.

We could talk about making insurance for midwives affordable, so that they could actually practice their craft.

We could talk about encouraging doctors to see midwives as allies, not rivals.

We could talk about how low-intervention births yield better outcomes for low-risk pregnancies.

We could talk about how adding fuel to the fire of antagonism between home-based birth advocates and hospital birth advocates is irresponsible.

We could talk about how the fear-mongering around midwives has been institutionalized in law, has never accurately reflected practice, and is symptomatic of a much bigger problem with the way we have over-medicalized birth to the extent that it is damaging the health of pregnant women and babies.

The division is as spurious as the one between “stay-at-home” and “working” parents.

Hospitals and ob/gyns are important to have when things go wrong in a way that requires surgical/technological intervention. But midwives and doctors who have good working relationships can facilitate home births that have fantastic statistical outcomes.

And having journalists and bloggers I mostly respect treat the home-birth decision as a crazy-pants magical thinking sort of option is just making me feel depressed about the whole feminist blogosphere today :(.

Notes

  1. kissingunderspiderwebs reblogged this from scribblingface
  2. scribblingface reblogged this from radicallane
  3. azelie reblogged this from bohemianarthouse
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  7. sabelmouse reblogged this from radicallane
  8. ohwhatprovidence reblogged this from lesbianlegbreaker
  9. lesbianlegbreaker reblogged this from radicallane
  10. fanjadwiga reblogged this from feministlibrarian and added:
    What she said. We could even talk, my god, about why women don’t feel safe or comfortable doing hospital/birthing center...
  11. kmackattack reblogged this from mossbelly
  12. absurdeffigy reblogged this from mossbelly
  13. labyrinthseeker reblogged this from mossbelly and added:
    My little sister was born at home as well! Mom’s midwife was AMAZING
  14. thelessdeceived reblogged this from mossbelly
  15. mossbelly reblogged this from farcical-aquatic-ceremony and added:
    Both me and my little sister were born at home. Woo for midwives and magical moms!
  16. farcical-aquatic-ceremony reblogged this from feministlibrarian
  17. radicallane reblogged this from feministlibrarian and added:
    I mostly avoid the big feminist blogs, because they just fill me with rage. Ugh.
  18. feministlibrarian posted this