UnBreaking Birth Panel Discussion
Channel: Ryan McAllister
Date: 2013-11-24

UnBreaking Birth Panelists share crucial perspectives in addressing the problems with our birth care system:

11:33 Alexa Richardson discusses why criminalizing midwifery is dangerous.

23:10 Nurse-Midwife Erin Fulham speaks to the question: Are birthing centers safer than home births?

35:30 Cori Cohen points out that both CPMs and CNMs in training attend more births than Obstetricians. Jeremy Galvan elaborates by discussing the distinction between apprenticeship-centered training and academic training.

37:25 Jeremy Galvan talks about why requiring collaborative agreements between midwives and physicians is harmful to midwifery.

40:55 Catherine Salam explains how hospital policy is a barrier to incorporating midwifery options for mothers.

44:26 Leslie Hill Jenkins discusses her experience of racism and classism in the maternity ward first hand.

50:33 Jeremy Galvan explains how the bill to decriminalize CPMs in Maryland, which had a lot of public and political support was killed.

55:24 Celia Garcia Pérez discusses how the social stigma against midwives has adverse effects on women of color, particularly undocumented women.

57:27 Leslie Hill Jenkins compares the level of care she received as a woman of color in the hospital with the level of care she received from her midwife.

1:08:12 A UK-trained midwife from the audience shares her astonishment at the negative propaganda against midwives in the U.S.

What if something is deeply wrong with our childbirth system?
 
Highly-trained specialists working in well-equipped hospitals manage most births. Seen this way, one might assume that our system is safe, evidence-based, and effective. One might explain the high cost as a necessary trade-off for quality service while complications, injuries, and deaths might be explained as unavoidable.
 
But what if overwhelming evidence shows that we're living with a system that isn't very good at all, on average?
 
The U.S. birth care system has saddled millions of women with expensive over-treatment, unnecessary complications, and avoidable risks.
 
When expecting a baby for the first time, there is so much for a couple to think about besides critically examining the birth system they are about to traverse. Let us not leave them alone facing a broken system.
 
Join us in this exploration of what's gone wrong with birth in the U.S, the impact on mothers and babies, and how we can unbreak birth.

This panel discussion was preceded by a lecture that surveys the situation of maternity care in the U.S.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs6KkTUzyh4

For more information: http://www.unbreakingbirth.org

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