Speaker 0
Into the wild, I'm going into the wild, I am. It's been a wild freedom child since I left my roots back home. Into the wild, I'm good. Into the wild, I'm here. It's been a while, freedom child, since I left my roots back home.
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Free Birth Society podcast. This is a radical space for women who are ready to celebrate their autonomous choices in birth, motherhood, and beyond. Together, we'll learn about wild birth through personal narrative, we'll explore the politics of birth, and we'll analyze everything that relates to our lives as women from a feminist perspective. Here's your host, Emilee Saldaya.
Speaker 0
It's been a wild freedom change since I've left my rules back home.
Speaker 2
Historian Anna Sabrina comes on the show today to cover the time period in American history of seventeen fifty to eighteen twenty. This time period is marked when male physicians began what would become a full on obstetrical takeover and effectively ruined midwifery as it has stood for thousands of years. Join us on a depressing and important history lesson so that we can understand where we've come from and perhaps glean insight sight into how to interrupt the cycles of male domination in which we accidentally protect and perpetuate. Okay. Anna Sabrina, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3
Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I'm excited for this. So today, we're gonna take our listeners, down down a a historical rabbit hole. We're gonna be talking about the transition, in time in American history where, culture shifted from midwifery into obstetrics. This is, an area of of research and expertise for our guest today, Anna Sabrina. So, yeah, why don't you give us a little a little introduction about you? And and particularly, I'm interested in why, why this was your choice to Mhmm. Be your area of research.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, hi. My name is Anas Brenna. I'm a college student, a historian, and a birth keeper in the Winchester, Virginia area. And yeah. So I started doing this research for my senior seminar, studying for my bachelor's. And I think it was really just something I was drawn to because so much of the history around birth focuses on the twentieth century. It's gonna focus on, you know, the era of twilight sleep and how we got to where we are today in that time frame. And so I was really looking at, you know, the origins of the United States as a country and how did we get from this normal state of, you know, midwifery led care and female led care and childbirth being the work of women to the work of men, and just how did that become normal. So yeah.
Speaker 2
A question I ask myself every day. Why?
Speaker 3
No. Of course. And I think, you know, it's something that I get asked so often by, you know, women my age or just, you know, moms that I work with where they're like, why is it like this? And I think there's a whole conversation to be had about, you know, the state of health care and the profit driven motives of the hospital system, But there's something more to it. It's more than just that because what we see in obstetrics is this kind of very special, almost deeply rooted mistrust of female bodies and hatred of female bodies that we don't see in even other areas of medicine. So, yeah. I think, you know, the revolutionary period is a period that I define as around seventeen fifty to eighteen twenty. It's like that turn of the century, the last half of the eighteenth century. And prior to that and going into that, it's so important to realize that women hold a monopoly on birth. Like, men were just barred from birth rooms and male physicians included, save for, you know, surgical emergencies where they may have been called in to consult. And what's really fascinating about looking at birth in that kind of female context is we need to understand that it's also a really highly social event. One book that's really great, if if anyone's wanting to learn more about this or dig deeper would be The Healer's Calling, Women in Medicine in Early New England by Rebecca j Tannenbaum. And she does a great job of really discussing how, you know, in the colonial period and the early revolutionary, the households of the day were largely self contained economies. And so healing was women's household work because the preservation and use of herbs is going to go right along with that of foodstuffs. Mhmm. And it's as a historian, it's really, really neat to kinda look back through this today because we have recipe books left over as artifacts. So they're going to have, you know, cooking recipes in them. We see a lot of these European immigrants basically adapting to new world foods. But there are a lot of herbs in there. There are a lot of medicinal recipes including those for, you know, women's health. So we see herbs for the regulation of women's cycles, the induction and augmentation of childbirth, the postnatal period. And a lot of these are not so different from the homeopathic kinda recipes that we see circulate today in women's health. But what's really neat about sources like this is that a lot these are all handwritten. And so a lot of times, we're going to see annotations in the margins. So women are going to write where they got the recipe from and who they are. And occasionally, it's from published sources. But for the most part, we're seeing recipes and the books themselves being passed from granddaughter to, you know, her sister, from mother to daughter, from aunt to niece, and just, you know, kinda seeing that communal aspect of women gathering and sharing information. And, of course, a small portion of it is going to be recorded and written down, which is just so different from how learning is today. And and, of course, with, you know, normal practices around childbirth back then, there's there's a large emphasis in recorded diaries and then, of course, in, midwifery manuals at the time where, you know, women would continue with their daily activities and walk around. And as labor progressed, you know, her midwife would be sent for, her birth attendants would be set before. A lot of times, the gathering of these women is going to be done by the husband. So we do see, like, a very clear kinda division of labor along sex based lines. So, you know, anything outside of the house is going to fall under the role of men. So, like, what's your husband's job? Well, he's gonna go and get your midwife. And and I think it's also important to clarify that the majority of these midwives are not formally trained in the way that we would think today. These are lay midwives. These are women who have given birth themselves and, you know, had a passion for it and just had a calling to help the other women in their community. And same thing with the birth attendants. These are adult married women who have given birth themselves, and that's the initiation into attending childbirth where, you know, once you've gone through that yourself, you're now going to be called to assist the other women in your community. And so so a lot of times, midwives would bring a birth stool. Men and children are going to be barred from the room. The fire is going to be, you know, stoked up. And then again, a lot of encouraging the woman to walk around the room. But what's really interesting is that this was a time for women to gather and gossip and share information. Tannenbaum actually wrote a lot about this saying that, you know, unless there was something wrong or the mother was in unusual pain, this was likely a very celebratory time. These women were, you know, joking with each other and telling stories. And, you know, they were also supporting her during the actual birth. So during second stage, the most common position is sitting upright supported by attendants. There was a lot of the midwife catching the baby. And then what else is really interesting is that it was common practice to swaddle the mother's belly and thighs in queen linen to discourage, you know, the variety of infections that were known as child bed fever. And and so I think that's really interesting because our cultural perception of birth without, you know, modern medicine is like women were dying left and right. And it's it's, like, well, to, you know, to a degree, sure, but also that's just not real in the history. I think we definitely see a lot of women dying postpartum once male physicians move into birth and definitely not under the midwifery model.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I'd like to pause there actually because this is this is a very big deal. Right? Because this this cultural narrative that that is still very alive today, that before before modern medicine, before hospitals, before, you know, the men in the in the white coats were saving all of us, women were dying in droves.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And this is, you know, a lot a lot of women and students and and friends of mine really often bring this up, and they say,
Speaker 0
what
Speaker 2
are you supposed to say to that? And I'd love to just kind of expand on this a little bit more because, yes, there is health. There's sanitation issues. Mhmm. Yes, there there is the the reality of of life in in seventeen fifty to, you know, this this era that we're talking about. But but let's expand on that a little bit Yeah. Because so let me pose it like this. Is it true that women were dying in droves? And is it true that as soon as the the men in the lab coats brought us into the hospitals and started drugging us and pulling out our babies that everyone started surviving?
Speaker 3
Yeah. In a short answer, I would say no. In a short answer, I would say it was almost the opposite that birth got a lot more dangerous for mothers and babies once male physicians started presiding over birth. I think it's really important to think about, you know, things like swaddling the belly and thighs in clean linen. You know, midwives knew how to ward off infection. They knew about basic sanitation more than is given credit. I think the other really interesting thing, I think it's eighteen forty two or fourteen eighteen forty three is the first time that a male physician's medical journal, comes right out and is, like, going between patient to patient is spreading infection. So, you know, we think about the civil war, and we're like, oh, they just didn't know better. They knew better. It was in the literature. It's just not common practice. I think, you know, a lot of a lot of that is just really a myth. I think it was a smear campaign. We've seen smear campaigns against midwives during this period. We've seen them in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2
Yeah. When is there not been a smear campaign?
Speaker 3
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you can Google it today and find articles about, you know, you're gonna kill your baby if you birth at home with a licensed midwife even.
Speaker 0
Mhmm.
Speaker 3
I think the only thing that I really came across which was women dying where they wouldn't die today is, you know, we do see stories of women who have a deformed pelvis or a pelvis that's too small to birth their baby. And I would guess that this is kind of the origins of the, you know, oh, your pelvis is too small. But what's really, really important to know is that these are women who suffered from rickets during childbirth or during their, childhood. So, you know, we're talking about legitimate pelvic deformities. Right. And often that was threatening to the mother and the baby. Also coming out
Speaker 2
of, a couple however many generations of corseting and, like, literally binding up the body.
Speaker 3
Mhmm. No. Absolutely. And and so I think for the most part, you know, there's there's no one today that's going to have a in the first world at least, a deformed pelvis that can't birth their baby to the extent that we're going to see in historic literature because those kinds of diseases that are largely linked to, you know, poverty and diet, They're just not prevalent in the first world today. But yeah. So overall, I would say no. We there is actually even some survival with cesareans during this period under physician led care, but that's a whole another kinda can of worms just because a lot of times it would kill women. But, yeah, no. Under midwifery care, I really don't see the evidence that women were dying at all.
Speaker 2
Okay. So in this in this era, is this the time when physicians are coming over from what is now the UK? And and, like, is this the time when hospitals are are beginning to pop up? Yeah. So that that's actually
Speaker 3
a great question. It is. I think we're starting to establish ourselves as a new country, and so we're seeing a lot of urbanization that's contributing to that. We're also seeing a lot of enlightenment ideas, right, about science and the body and experts and, you know, men start professionalizing their fields. And so, you know, that that professionalization, the creation of guilds and associations and teaching hospitals and hospitals in general, it's really a concerted wet effort to push women out of the healing arts. It's not really rooted in any kind of what we would call evidence based. Right? Like, we're not creating hospitals because we think it creates a better standard of patient care. It's just like there aren't laws against it. So how do we push women out of this profession? Well, we can pass a law saying that, you know, in order to practice, you need to be a member of this guild, or you need to have an educational requirement and then bar women from those associations.
Speaker 2
I love how, like and and when I say I love, I mean, I hate how people today sometimes have such a hard time wrapping their head around the true, like, sinister beginnings.
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah. You know? Oh, yeah. No. For sure. It's,
Speaker 2
Like, it was how could you say this? It was clearly just to save the sick
Speaker 3
and dying. Yeah. No. And it and it really wasn't because prior to that, prior to this period, midwives were operating in the US pretty free from government restrictions. There was no oversight and licensing. There were two colonies that licensed midwives by oath, which would have been Massachusetts and New York, but it wasn't licensing in the sense we think today. It was more like, you know, you take an oath to serve and to save women and to, I think it had a clause about not performing late term abortion, which, you know, abortion during this period was really viewed as immoral for risking the life of the mother. Even the Catholic church did not acknowledge life until quickening. And it's also really interesting because, you know, there's no definitive way to test for early pregnancy. So the very definition of pregnancy is lying within the woman's own understanding of her body. You know, there's no external Mhmm. Judgment. There's no technocratic model that can say, oh, you know, we know more about your body than you do. It's all very, very, individual. And so, you know and that's another thing. We do see male physicians, kind of creating the cultural taboo that we have today against abortion for the first time as a way to kinda, you know, turn the public opinion against it and then say, okay. Midwives are the ones doing this. Midwives are the ones that are overseeing this.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Because my understanding was was up until perhaps around this this time period that you're speaking of, even the Catholic church supported this concept of bringing on your period, which is AKA abortion until quickening.
Speaker 3
Mhmm. So I don't know that they supported it, but I do know that they certainly didn't condemn it. They basically said that there was no life. They didn't acknowledge human life until quickening, which is what? Like, around four or five months. It's in the second trimester. And, yeah, there are a ton of recipes for bringing on the menses or restoring obstructed menses. And so, you know, we definitely see we don't have records of women writing about abortions, but I think, you know, it's just so important to understand that it's pregnancy, it's birth, it's, you know, pregnancy release, and miscarriage, and abortion, and stillbirth. All of these things are under the purview of women. These are all very private affairs. These aren't things that, you know, we see male court systems, male medical systems really having a lot of say over. But yeah. So I would say it's the seventeen seventies in the US that we start seeing men really get in on obstetrics or start the field of obstetrics. It was often still called midwifery. So I think I'm I'm just gonna go ahead and use the term physicians to describe, you know, man midwives, obstetricians, barber surgeons. They kinda called themselves by a million names. I know I know it's very scary. Like, you're hearing barber surgeon, and you're like, why would you want that person at your birth? But, you know, why would you want any surgeon at your birth if you don't want surgery? I think it's just a question we still grapple with today. But yeah. So I think and they were very aware that to define their specialty, they're in direct competition with traditional female knowledge, but they're also trying to, you know, exclude women from the ranks of their professions. So they they did kind of professionalize their field. They did also
Speaker 2
What you can't see is Anna Sabrina throwing her cat
Speaker 4
out of out of the video. I know.
Speaker 1
I was
Speaker 3
like, you know, just get out of the way. They're trying to get in on the action here. But, but yeah. And so a lot of them are coming from the continent. And, you know, in Europe, there's much more of a history of midwifery. So midwives are, I guess, able to almost integrate themselves into, you know, medicine as medicine develop institutionally. Even though, you know, we talk a lot about that today. Are they midwives? Are they obstetric nurses? What's the difference there? But, you know, I think the other important thing about British and European educations is it's giving these men a blueprint that can be applied in the United States. So they know kinda what are the standards of a new medical value system that's focused on formal education and institutionally based clinical experience. And so, you know, yeah, they start building schools, they start creating guilds, and they start fighting for public respectability. They were met resistances first just because there are these, you know, cultural taboos about who should see a woman giving birth, who should be in the room. And a lot of people thought it wasn't men, but, you know, like I said, they did start really attacking midwives and basically saying that these women are uneducated. They're dangerous. They have no business being around birth.
Speaker 2
So And on it goes into today.
Speaker 3
And this is also when we see their relationship with midwives change too, which is so important because prior to this, you know, midwives would call in male physicians if there were birth emergencies that called for surgical answers. And many of them kind of you know, from the records we have, it seems like they work together pretty well. Midwives were treated with respect by surgeons even though they were technically, you know, ranked below them or whatnot.
Speaker 2
But at that point, the physicians weren't trying to do a full takeover. Right? Like, they were Of
Speaker 3
course not.
Speaker 2
They were playing the role that really would be ideal today Yeah. In those rare cases where medical
Speaker 3
help Yeah. Is needed. Absolutely. They were certainly not, you know, even waiting in the wings in case something went wrong. It was kind of like, something goes wrong and you need a surgeon, you call a surgeon. And so during this period, we start to see surgeons having a lot of contempt towards midwives. There was one surgeon, William DeWeese, who wrote about this very publicly and privately and actually would hold midwives up as examples of bad practitioners. They started to establish the field of jurisprudence and push women out of, you know, medical expertise over their own bodies. So prior to this point, women, sorry, midwives were also expert witnesses of the female body. They would be called upon by the courts to establish dates of birth, to talk about, you know, if there were cases of adultery or birth outside of marriage, stuff like that. And man midwives actually started to participate in the trial through the prosecution of infanticide. That's kinda how they got their leg in with the court systems. And in the seventeen seventies, there were a number of women that were actually convicted on the testimony of male practitioners who were later exonerated after their execution. So, you know, this is very reminiscent of the witch hunts of, you know, prior centuries where we're seeing we're seeing a real crackdown on women. You know? Who owns women's bodies? Who has a right to make laws about them? Who has a right to prosecute women? Just all that kind of stuff. But they did flock to obstetrics. It was considered a very good field to start a general practice with because, you know, once you went to someone's birth, that family was very likely to call on you in the future, as they had medical concerns arise. But they, they also start to pathologize it. So female midwives often write about birth with this inherent trust of the physiology and kinda understood birth as a blossoming of fertility. They understood it as, you know, the high point in pregnancy. Male physicians pathologize it. So they think that even a healthy pregnancy is detrimental and deadly. One physician who really started this would have been Benjamin Rush. He defined even normal and healthy pregnancy as a disease. And so that's the basis of a lot of, you know, gynecologic history and development.
Speaker 2
Also, in current American insurance today, it's labeled Oh, yeah. As a disease. It's categorized under disease. When I used to work for a CNM, I always dealt with insurance, and Mhmm. I would often see the records of these women, and it would be under the disease Wow. Of pregnancy.
Speaker 3
That's crazy. I didn't know that. I knew that a lot of times when you go into the hospital, vaginal birth is listed as, like, a procedure or whatnot. Like, it's either, you know, cesarean or vaginal, but it's not it's still billed as a, something you're going in to have done to you in a sense.
Speaker 2
Oh,
Speaker 3
god. But and there's, of course, there's so much male saviorism kinda going on here. I know there's an eighteen twelve essay, an essay on the importance of the obstetric art where he wrote that with the existence of the field of obstetrics, women can now look to men for safety in the perilous conditions of birth. And just like today, I think they kinda stepped into birth and made birth quite a bit more perilous, you know, than it had to be. We start it it was man, man midwives and barber surgeons who are pioneering the widespread use and acceptance of forceps. We start to see a much more surgical birth experience. There is, you know, the widespread use of episiotomy, bloodletting, and to a lesser extent, cesarean sections. But forceps was particularly and problematically frequent. So to a point that even obstetricians started to write, and they were like, well, I think we're getting a bit carried away. I think younger colleagues are using forceps too much, but it just kept growing. There was a huge business in the US as well for manufacturing and selling forceps. So we would see ads for that in newspapers and periodicals from the time. But I know there was yeah. There was, what is it? One surgeon. I think it was Shippen, but not quite sure. But I know he arrived to a natural birth, and he expressed dismay that he was too late and said he would have liked to have caused to use instruments. And this is at the mother's bedside. He kinda jingles the forceps in his pockets, and this was recorded by a female witness to the birth. And it's like you're reading this and you're like, oh my goodness. You know, this is so similar to the power dynamic that we see in hospital births and in in, you know, births in the system today.
Speaker 2
It's exactly the same. Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah. No. It's the similarities are really jarring. But you you read a lot and it's it was interesting reading about, you know, how much you can go on the, you know, sites that try to track and report obstetric violence and see those same techniques here. So this is also where we get the whole, you know, if you cannot persuade the woman, you can pull out her family members or pull out the father and kinda get them to go in and persuade her to submit. Mhmm. And of course, the language, you know, submit and to recognize her place and allow me to you know, there's a lot of that kind of language where it's like, who's holding the power here? It's certainly not the woman anymore. And and then, of course, this is where we see birth starting to get private. So I think, you know, inside the system, for the first time, our generation is starting to see birth a little less private, you know, I guess, pre COVID at least, where, you know, it's like, oh, you can have your husband with you or you can have a doula, and, you know, you couldn't have that in the sixties and the seventies and the fifties. Birth was so private. And that starts here because it's for the stated reason of making the doctor nervous or making the patient less likely to obey doctor's orders that they start trying to essentially push out family members and traditional female birth attendants.
Speaker 2
Right. Like, I wouldn't really call it private as much as controlled. Like, it's still a room full of people. There's nothing private about a hospital room. But now it is owned by the hospital, the state, the government, the doctors. Its family and friends are pushed out, which is the complete opposite of what it's always been.
Speaker 3
How it was. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Absolutely.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And then we we know this from the twilight sleep stuff that Mhmm. You know, the women were emerging from their birth covered in bruises. And so then, you know, and the partners weren't allowed in. And so then they started using the the the lamb's wool, right, to protect the wrist from, so
Speaker 3
nasty. It is. It really is. And I think, you know, a lot of women are still giving birth at home during this period, especially middle and upper class women, that is under physician led care. And so to a degree, they're able to use the setting of their home to exercise their power by being able to consent or refuse, you know, whatever procedures the doctor's offering. But just as today, you know, being at home is not a feel safe. So there are recorded instances where physicians are, you know, doing the same things that they do today in terms of, you know, what we would call obstetric violence or medical rate. So I know a physician, Duise, once recorded, more than once actually, the treatment of a patient without consent and with direct descent from all present. And, you know, of course, the language is slightly different, but you're reading this stuff and you're like, you know, this was how it was from the get go. And and so yeah. And so then the next part of my research explores why is it like this other than the fact that these are men, you know, what specifically is creating generations and generations of surgeons that are coming into birth spaces and bringing these power dynamics where, you know, they're carrying the authority and
Speaker 2
What do you mean other than that they're men?
Speaker 3
Well, I think that's that's actually a great question.
Speaker 2
Like, isn't it because they're men and men are are inherently under patriarchy predatory?
Speaker 3
I would say so. But I think, you know, there's there's definitely a question today that you hear that's like, okay, you know, why is the system like this? What, you know, why is it creating this? And I, you know, where does that obstetric culture come from? And of course, it's, you know, because they're men that's, you know, that kinda hits the nail right on the head. But I think it's basically the next part of my research kinda focuses on how the institutions they create kinda enforces that for previous or next generations to come, and how this becomes bred into medicine and the teaching of it.
Speaker 2
Right. Because under patriarchy, the model is domination and control. It's Yeah. It's rooted in it's rooted in oppressive hierarchy. So it's both because they're men, and it's also because they're men under patriarchy.
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
And so it's rooted in domination and control.
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
And so, of course, then they set up predatory systems.
Speaker 3
Of course. Yeah. And that's the first time that we start to see these systems get established is during the revolutionary period. So basically, in the south, we start to see slave teaching hospitals where, you know, we're doing obstetric and other surgical experimentation on enslaved black women.
Speaker 2
Oh my god.
Speaker 3
And, yeah, that's horrifying to read about. And I think it's a very difficult subject to study in history just because, you know, like so much of women's history and African American history, a lot of the record keeping is done by the people causing harm. Exactly. You know? So we don't really know, you know, what's going on inside the minds of these women.
Speaker 0
I mean,
Speaker 2
you could guess.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And and so, I mean, reading it, I could only describe it as, like, the highest form of medical rate. There's a great book on it, Medical Bondage, Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by DJ Cooper Owens. And I think it's relatively recent as well. But he really explores, like, Marion Sims and what he did with, you know
Speaker 2
Who was the doctor?
Speaker 3
Deidre Cooper Owens. K. Yeah. I highly recommend it. It was an amazing book. She really delves into it. And I think it's the first book of its time. I might be mistaken, but I do think it was quite groundbreaking in that sense. So for anyone who doesn't know, doctor Marion Sims is kinda called the father of American gynecology. He developed a number of gynecological surgeries during the nineteenth century, and he did so by learning off of enslaved female patients who really had no say in the matter. And he would practice on them in operating theater. He would sell tickets to the surgeries and would not use anesthesia. And
Speaker 2
I didn't know to sell tickets. Oh my god.
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah. This is happening in public. And essentially, I mean, it's not public in the sense that it's in the town square, but it is in a theater full of, you know, medical students and journalists and all of that. And he actually did receive a lot of flack from some of his northern colleagues about not unit using anesthesia. And so he and his colleagues defended that practice by saying that African American women tolerate pain more easily. And that's something that we still see up until recently in the, you know, in culture, in textbooks that, you know, oh, well, black women tolerate pain more easily, and it has its roots in this guy, which I think, you know, should give us some pause for thought.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Of course. We definitely still still see that. That's very alive in hospitals and in OB GYN.
Speaker 3
Oh, and it's horrific. It's absolutely sad that, you know, in the twenty first century, we're still kinda basing our medicine off of this. But as anyone who works in birth knows, you know, it's very slow to change, and it it's just building off of, you know, previous generations of horrific birth practices in the US and in the west. And then, of course, in the north, there's really not a more ethical answer to the question of clinical experience because we see the construction of almshouses and poor houses and public hospitals that all have lying inwards. And so they're using poor women as training objects. I came across one source that described them as breathing cadavers. And, you know, I think how much could we say that that still applies to the way more or less women are looked at in the system today. You know, that they're there for you to learn on, they're there for you to practice on, they're not there for you to care for. You know, I think modern medicine is so removed from the true meaning of, you know, what it means to care for someone. But, yeah, they're they did provide medical care, quote unquote, for poor women, but their motives were pretty complex here because there were this was the first place where we start to see serious for profit motives. So it's not just that, oh, you know, my client's family is paying me, but that, you know, they start codifying the roles and the privileges of apprentices and students, residents, attending physicians, and they start charging for clinical experience. They start selling tickets to theater. So there's a lot of money invested in the system for the first time. Yeah. And this is very, very early in America's history.
Speaker 2
Right. And just continuing to see women's bodies, women's lives as completely disposable.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of these women are dying at much higher rates than, you know, their wealthy counterparts just because they have no friends and family to really act as advocates during this period at least, you know, when we still sometimes have friends and family in birth rooms at home. And there was one really heartbreaking account. This was from eighteen nineteen from John g Wilden who was a resident physician at the Philadelphia almshouse. And he describes a woman who refused to consent to a cesarean surgery to, you know, cut her child out out of a very legitimate fear of that operation, especially in this day and age when, you know, her own survival or the survival of her child would have both been very up in the air. But I believe she was someone who had had a deformed pelvis, and she had had a few previous children who didn't survive due to the deformed pelvis. And so nowhere in this physician's notes or in the records is the reason for her treatment described as, like, any kind of genuine concern for her welfare or that of her child, but they're basically pretty pissed off that, you know, how dare she refuse what we recommend. And so in an effort to influence her decision, they withdrew palliative care. And so that basically means during this period, they're putting her in a room alone, and they're taking her off of painkillers or opiates. And so this is a quote from his notes. All opiates having been directed to be withheld in the hope that the severity of her pain would induce her submission. And, you know, and then he later records that she dies alone later that night. And I remember reading that during my research and just, like, bawling my eyes out. Because it's like, you know, here's this woman who's so far across, like, time and space and disconnected from us, but then you read something like that. And it's just like, you know, it's horrific. It's horrific to read through these records even though they're hundreds of years old. But they're
Speaker 2
not hundreds of years old. That's the thing. Like, these stories are alive today all over this planet. Yeah. You know? Like, she represents, like, every woman who's been abandoned and tortured and and murdered.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. And it and it's so difficult to, you know, see just how closely all these elements of what was going on right at the start of when men started presiding over births are still happening today. And of course, how often they're happening today at the hands of female practitioners who are being trained in the system. But but yeah. So a lot of women in these public institutions are dying during childbirth. A lot of them are dying, postpartum just because of the soaring rates of contagious disease and infection and the sanitation levels. And and then, of course, I think this is when we get those myths of, you know, childbirth being really deadly. Because these physicians that are working in these public institutions and going patient to patient, they're then practicing you know, they're maintaining private practices and bringing these diseases to women at home. So, yeah, there's there's definitely that. But but, yeah, that's What do you heard of it.
Speaker 2
What do you know about, like, and then what happens with midwifery?
Speaker 3
You know, I think midwifery still keeps going, especially in more rural areas. So I think there's a reason why a lot of my research is looking at Philadelphia or New York because these are urban centers. These are where, you know, you're logistically able to build these big institutions or to maintain a thriving practice. We know in the rural south that, you know, the grand midwives kept practicing well into the twentieth century. And, I do know that basically in the south, there was a tradition up until, I would say, midway through the twentieth century for black and white babies to be born at home through black lay midwives that we now call the grand midwives. And that, you know, there was a big smear campaign again in the, I guess you would say, what, thirties and forties where, you know, they're painting these midwives as uneducated and dangerous because they lack formal education. And I know in the twentieth century as well that, you know, in urban centers, there are also European immigrant midwives who are practicing, and a lot of them are having formal education, but they don't speak English. And so it's very easy to also brand them as like, oh, you know, they're foreigners and they're dirty and, you know, they're really unsafe. And so yeah. I mean, I don't think we start to see birth in hospitals for women who financially can afford any different until the twentieth century. But even when most births are happening at home, I think really it's that kinda turn of the century from the seventeen hundreds to the eighteen hundreds where it starts to become mainstream to have a male physician at your birth, and to basically have a man delivering your baby quote unquote there. And that's another big thing, the word delivering, that changes during this period. Because we see the word delivered in the colonial era, but it's usually used in a religious sense. Right? Like, how you would pray for deliverance if you're going through something difficult. And I think that's really that was something really fascinating to come across because it speaks to medical hubris. Right? God's delivering her and then you're a male physician and you're like, no, no, no. I'm delivering her now. And so, you know, there definitely is a no. There there's a lot of that in there where you're kind of like, hey, dude. Like, did you just sub yourself in for, you know, divine here?
Speaker 2
Yes. So Yes. A hundred percent. Yeah. And medical midwives do it too. I mean, the savior complex is just so strong. And, you know, I'm thinking as you're you're kind of recapping this for us, just how the wheel keeps turning of this same, you know, community violence against women who step up into, the traditional roles of midwifery and Mhmm. Don't choose not to have air quotes formal training which equals medical training
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
And the ways in which medical midwives demonize and vilify those women. Yeah. I mean doctors too, but whatever. Like it's just so shocking to continue seeing women who who claim to walk the path of midwifery than other the women who also claim the path of midwifery, but without the medical air courts quotes formal training. It's so it's so upsetting.
Speaker 3
Well, and how the name you know, the term midwife has been so co opted because for hundreds and hundreds of year well, thousand midwives really were just women all to the path. There was no, you know, requirement for formal medical male training. And, you know, today, there are so many laws about lay midwives not being able to use the term midwife or to advertise their services as midwifery services because the term midwife has come to be accepted in our culture as a medical practitioner. But, you know, I think that begs the question, if you're gonna say that birth is a natural process, that it's not a medical experience, why would you need a licensed medical provider? You know, like, there's just a cognitive dissonance there. And I think, you know, it's such a jump for so many people today and so many women when you're like, oh, you know, birth is completely natural and they're like, well, what if there's an emergency and you're like, you know, what if you're driving your car and there's an emergency? You go to the emergency room. You interact with, you know, emergency help when there's an emergency. But, you know, we don't all go to the grocery store saying, okay, let me have my hospital bag packed, and let me have a doctor on call just in case I crash my car today. So I think, you know, and obviously, I I believe that that stems from men coming into birth and, you know, these ideas about women being the weaker sex and, you know, men being able to save them and just this idea that pregnancy is this deadly condition. It's never a state of health and, you know, it needs diagnosing, it needs treatment, and, you know, that's the basis of maternity care, like, that carried through. And I think the history just matters so much because it's like, you know, these these first generation of surgeons, they're training their apprentices and they're training their apprentices and it just carries down, like it never changes. So
Speaker 2
Also, it's the the in all of that of what you just said, the complete separation of mother baby.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. Now
Speaker 2
seeing the baby as separate than the mother, and in fact, like like what Elizabeth, you know, Floyd Davis Floyd writes about of in that separation, actually seeing the baby as, the product that needs to be saved from Mhmm. The mother's body. Yeah. Right? And it's it's just I just can't think of anything more more offensive.
Speaker 3
Oh, absolutely. And I think we see that very early on with the shift away from midwives because, you know, like we mentioned earlier that there's no pregnancy test back then. There's no ultrasound. There's no x-ray. There's nothing that can prove you're pregnant. You know, obviously, the lack of amensives, but we all know that that can be caused by stress. That can be caused by, you know, poor diet or hard physical labor. And so other than her own intuition, the movement of her child inside of her was really the only definitive proof that a woman was pregnant. And so, you know, it goes from even the understanding that there's a baby in there being rooted in a woman's intuition Mhmm. To, you know, we
Speaker 2
start to
Speaker 3
yeah. You need to prove it. And we see these men, you know, male physicians prosecuting for infanticide, prosecuting for abortion, you know, writing pamphlets about, you know, being a bad mother as we have these concepts of Republican motherhood come along. And so all of a sudden, it becomes the baby needs saving from the mother. Exactly. And it's, you know, they're the representatives of the baby's life, not the mother that holds the baby. So so yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. It's pretty wild how fresh this all still is.
Speaker 3
Just It is. It is. Because it's only a couple hundred years. So
Speaker 2
Well, anything else you wanna say or share?
Speaker 3
No. I think that about wraps it up. I would just say thank you so much for having me on. It's been absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2
Thank you so much. Do you have somewhere that you, like, wanna drive people to? Do you have
Speaker 3
a Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm on Instagram at Anna Sabrina dot b. That's a n a s a b r I n a dot b. And I would be happy to share any of my research including the kind of paper itself with anyone who wanted to ask for it or share it or put it out there. So.
Speaker 2
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3
Thank you.
Speaker 2
And that's it for today, my sisters. Check out everything we do, including one on one and group coaching. Learn about our private membership, in person retreats, and more on free birth society dot com. Our online courses are on free birth society courses dot com, including our flagship course, the complete guide to free birth. Don't miss the radical birth keeper school if you're ready to become the authentic midwife that women are searching for. Together we rise, and the revolution starts inside each of us. Our opening song is by Shyla Rae. And now, I'll leave you with our Freebird Society theme song, Wild Woman by Aruba Red.
Speaker 4
I honor you for the wisdom you held, the ancient traditions of plant medicine and womb magic. Magic. I feel the spirit of the ancestors as I place my hands upon my belly. This sacred portal will be honored, eons upon light beams of survival, withstanding the eradication of our power by design. I will not allow the separation of our young to be forced upon me. My sisters will no longer birth in captivity. The picket line redefined from burning our wild women to paralyzing us and drugging our babes. Strapped down in a clinical white bed, drying up the milk from our breasts, keep your needles. My family will never again be doomed to chase those dragons or your poison. We reject your fear. We choose love, everything with intention. Death, ascension. I will fly and bring her back from the star. Wild woman, she still lives inside. Wild woman, from you, I will not hide. They could not bend your spirit away, so please teach me your way. I'm ready to learn from you
