I wouldn’t be a very good Marxist or feminist midwife if I didn’t have some things to say about what’s going on in the world. But once my first three months of the new job were over, I finally had energy to do more political work, and therefore have had less time for blogging.
I am trying to carve out more time to write on this forum about the ongoing war on women, and what people of all genders and political persuasions can and are doing to fight it. I wanted to share just a few things here about what I’ve been thinking about, and that I hope to explore more in later, more in depth posts.
The Hobby Lobby decision prompted immediate protest at the grassroots
First, the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision of last month irked me more than I can say. It was an insult to science and to “freedom” and to women’s bodily autonomy. And so everything I wanted to say about it was published over at SocialistWorker.org, in this piece: “The ‘Freedom’ to Deny Women Healthcare.” I have more to say on the resistance to that decision, especially how defensive everyone is about contraception, but that will hopefully be developed in another upcoming article in that publication.
Also, I follow with great interest the ongoing legal battles over forced surgical birth, and their connection to abortion and other reproductive rights in this country. I really liked this piece, and laud Jennifer Goodall for her courageous stance for normal birth after c-section: “Pregnant Women Warned: Consent to Surgical Birth or Else.” Women losing the right to how they give birth is intimately connected to the right to contraception and abortion — another topic I look forward to exploring more in this space and others.
You must see this film. #ObviousChild
On a lighter note, I LOVED seeing Obvious Child in the theaters on its brief stint in my city. What a *fabulous* and hilarious comedy about abortion, of all wonderful things. There is nothing so wonderful as a bunch of sex-positive, abortion-positive, pro-woman people dealing with an unplanned pregnancy in a very real way on the big screen. I have heard people say that if Knocked Up or Juno were about abortion, there wouldn’t have been a story. But guess what — you can have a story when an unplanned pregnancy results in abortion (like half of all unplanned pregnancies do in this country) — that story just happens to then focus on the woman herself. Revolutionary.
Finally, I am sick to death of the divisive commentary that passes for analysis about why the LGBT movement has made strides, while the war on women continues. This disturbing piece from the Daily Beast, “Ten Reasons Women Are Losing While Gays Keep Winning” has its response from yours truly coming up quickly. Suffice it to say that biological determinism has no role in progressive analysis, and apology about abortion is what got us further entrenched in the war on women, and will not provide our way out.
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Too many teasers? Sorry. Let’s say this is my way of holding myself accountable to myself and my readers. It shall be written!
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I am a nurse-midwife practicing in full-scope (reproductive health and birth care) in a community birth setting in the Midwest. My clinical practice is an extension of my longtime commitment to social reproduction (a close cousin and friend to intersectional -- perhaps synonymous to, depending on who you talk to!) marxist feminism and reproductive justice activism.
I write anonymously to protect my job security and make clear that these are my personal opinions, and to make clear that I am also a professional whose personal opinions can also be separate from the care I provide. (While I personally believe in abolition of the prison industrial complex, I still have clients that are cops/married to cops [etc.] and maintain respectful, compassionate clinical relationships with them.)
I was called to midwifery circuitously, through my love for reproductive rights and an interest in providing abortion care. Then I met midwives and learned about the intertwined legacy of midwifery and abortion, and I fell in love with birth. In my practice, I have worked as a primary care midwife in a Federally Qualified Health Center and campaigned fiercely for true midwifery in a hospital setting rife with obstetrical violence (and lost that fight!). I have learned how to bring midwifery care from the belly of the beast in a large teaching hospital that functions in many ways as an assembly line of medicalized birth. I have also had my heart broken by my own midwife when I realized that my dream job in home birth was actually a nightmare in many ways. I have found healing through communities of midwives that work to support each other through the traumas of toxic healthcare workplaces.
I am constantly learning, working on my personal and professional growth, and striving for accountability, particularly as an anti-racist that benefits from white privilege.
Midwives of the Revolution is meant as a nod to Marx and Engles's writing on the process of social revolution, as well as an aspiration to be among the midwives fighting to transform the perinatal health system in the context of the struggles for reproductive justice. The social revolution it will take to win reproductive justice will have to involve birth workers, other health workers (unionized, and not; professionals and not), educators, abolitionists, environmentalists, and of course childbearing people and families.
I love the way that Marx's collaborator Engles (a brilliant philosopher and activist in his own right) describes the dialectical process of childbirth, which, for me, also undergirds my commitment to bodily autonomy and reproductive justice. To paraphrase, some of the events that midwives are called to may be "violent" or forceful, like childbirth -- not unlike revolution and social struggle: The fetus is negated by the neonate, who can only be brought about by the force of childbirth. The midwife facilitates that transition, as force (or social struggle) facilitates the transition from one form of social relations to another.
Scolding the philosopher Duhring, Frederick Engles defends the social force required to fundamentally transform society: "Force, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms."
(Anti-Duhring, found here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm#087)
Midwives of the Revolution 