New Freedom = New Strangleholds
November 24, 2004
8:59 a.m., MT
Sunni's Mood: ranting
World Net Daily reports today that Ron Paul's attempt to require parental consent for federally-funded mental health screenings of children failed. Big surprise.

(If you need a refresher on this, in 2001 Bush signed an executive order, "Community-Based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities", as part of his New Freedom Initiative [more on the HHS site]. Part of the plan is to perform "mental health screenings" on children and pregnant women, eventually expanding to include every American.)

The obvious way to keep your children from being "screened" is to keep them out of the state's clutches -- as if there aren't good enough reasons to keep them out of the youth-indoctrination prisons as it is. What I'm focusing on is stopping the pre-cradle nannying that has already gone much too far. Yep, some more female-oriented ranting is on the way ...


I'll state my position right at the beginning, so there's no mistake: Pregnancy is not a sickness or disease. However, it has increasingly been treated as such, first by doctors who have medicalized the entire process, and by many women themselves, who opt for high-tech care and go running to the OB/GYN for reassurance at every little atypical twitch.

Don't get me wrong -- medicine has improved prenatal and perinatal health care in many ways, most notably by improving nutrition and hygiene, respectively. And for women with genuinely high-risk pregnancies, high-tech health care may be the difference between life and death, for the mother, infant, and possibly both. I am not against appropriate, intensive care for those who will benefit from it. But to treat a normal event in a woman's life as a malady, and to pile on the ninny-nannying and stress by second-guessing and micromanaging every moment of those 40 weeks, something very important gets trampled. The woman's ability to listen to her body, and to respond appropriately to its messages, gets lost. Relying on the formulaic approach (which is essentially all that allopathic medicine is) instead of an individualized approach means that her intuition may be overruled, ultimately causing more harm than good (in a number of ways).

I've seen this issue from both sides of the coin. I was married to a physician for many years, and worked in a hospital, sometimes caring for pregnant women. I saw (and heard from him) all kinds of things that could be problematic with pregnancy and childbirth. Yet, when I got pregnant in 1997, at the ripe old age of 36 (which is enough to have made me "high risk" according to some ninny-nannies) and with a chronic breathing problem, I chose direct-entry midwives to be my primary caregivers. (A direct-entry midwife is an individual who has no prior allopathic medical training; that is, the person is not a nurse or some other health professional who then decides to "specialize" in home and/or birthing center births. Here's more on the types of midwives, if you're interested.) Despite all those "reasons" why I shouldn't have been pursuing a home birth, my two midwives agreed to take me as a client ... and the experience was wonderful (so much so that I engaged one of the midwives -- the other had left the practice -- for my second pregnancy). Both pregnancies and births were as enjoyable and easy as Heinlein rather infamously portrayed them.

I doubt that my experience is typical. However, the two elements that were probably most important in having such easy times can be replicated in other women with some success. Those are: 1) Being relaxed (and getting informed) about the changes my body would undergo, and the work required of it; and 2) choosing caregivers who understood my approach, and supported me. They answered my questions, loaned me books, and we worked together, rather than as experts/idiot, or adversaries. I didn't stress over every calorie, every unexpected event, or the uncertainty of what remained before me. Knowing that it was a limited-time event, I tried to enjoy it as much as possible. And I succeeded.

And now the state, in its infinite wisdom and helpfulness, ratchets up the fear for pregnant women, in the specter of mandatory mental health evaluations. If there has ever been a better reason for seeking out midwives who won't rat you out to the fedgov, I don't know what it might be.

But, of course, midwives are under attack (more here) by the medicolegal establishment ... More freedom slowly vanishing. What's equally important to the loss of freedom is a woman's ability to exercise her personal power to make the best choices for herself and her baby.

Midwifery is safer for normal, uncomplicated pregnancies than a hospital birth. It has a lower likelihood of postpartum infection, and faster labor and delivery (in very large part because the laboring mother is more relaxed). It enables much more privacy than checking into a hospital, getting baby tagged with an SSN, needlessly abused under the guise of "necessary medical procedures", and immediately plugged into a medical database. And now, it may be the only option left for avoiding the ever-grasping tentacles of the state.

Please, if you are pregnant, thinking of having children, or are the spouse of a woman who is either of these, don't default into the medical model of pregnancy care. It's increasingly dangerous, limiting to you, and linked to the state.

Sunni

Replies: 2 individuals have opined

On Monday, November 29th, Monica said:

I completely agree with what Sunni says, and have been interested in midwifery for some time now, especially since reading the book "The Baby Catcher". It is a memoir of a midwife who was very successful and made her pregnant women happy, however eventually fell victim to the irresponsible lawsuits that plague America. As I am not American myself, and come from Eastern Europe, there was no possibility of replacing my obi-gyn with a midwife at the time of my pregnacy. Home-births are discouraged in my country. However possibly due to different housing conditions (more people live in apartament buildings than houses) it would be dangerous to have a homebirth if something went wrong,ie. severe risks in transporting the labouring woman safely from her apartament to a hospital. My pregnacy was as normal as could be and I did not anticipate that my child would be born a bit early and would be born breech. Had I not been at the hospital it would have ended badly.
I fully support midwifery, as pregnacy and especially birth are times I would not want somebody telling me what to do or what drugs to take because they wanted to catch the late game of golf at the doctors' field. Midwifes are commited and definitely build up the women's confidence, and they do have the knowledge to take good care of us.
Thanks, Sunni, for writing on this very very important subject. It seems mainstream feminism is streaming around this important subject rather than diving right into it.

On Wednesday, November 24th, MamaLiberty said:

As a registered nurse of almost 20 years, I am in a position to know how completely right Sunni is in all of this.

The same is true of our health in general. Most of us could easily avoid going to a doctor of any kind 99% of the time if we invested some real effort in learning about nutrition and other things that make for healthy bodies and minds.

Of course you would need to see a doctor for a broken bone or a serious injury, but most of the ordinary ills we have do not require the services of a doctor, and we seldom benefit from it if we go.

None of the requirements for good health are secrets or even very complicated, but most doctors don't know much about it anyway. Very few doctors will go to the trouble of even learning your complete medical history, let alone working with you to find out what the real problem is or help you find natural solutions.

All they want to do is give you pills. There is no perfect medication, and many of them have serious side effects. The doctor will want to give you even more pills to counter the side effects! Many drugs can cause permanent damage. You have to know the risks and possible benefits - then decide if it's worth the risk to take it. Don't count on the doctor to give you much information about it at all. They don't always know themselves!

Just remember that most herbs are REAL medicine and must not be used carelessly. It is not automatically safe just because it is "natural". Take the time to learn about any medication you propose to take, and make an informed choice. There is a great deal of information available, even though the government has done a lot to limit information about herbs and alternative treatments.

There are also many alternative health practitioners available now. Make an informed choice there too, and prepare to take responsibility for your own health and well being. It's not always easy, but it can be done.