There is a time and place for everything.  Militant approaches are not my
choice in working with individual mothers.  I find I get a lot farther at
the individual level with an open mind, an attitude of loving curiosity and
respect for the person in front of me.  But as far as facing off large
powerful entities whose interests are at odds with those of mothers and
babies, militancy can't be beat.  There's a war going on out there, after
all.  Remember the Ad Council campaign? - if there had been more militancy
in the AAP, the formula industry would never have been able to have its way
with the AAP president, and sold out US mothers and babies for the umpteenth
time.

Hey, I'm so old that the term 'militant feminist' still sounds like a
compliment to me!

Perspectives differ depending on where you stand.  I've met plenty of my own
countrywomen (US citizens) and men who think of me as an 'alternative'
practitioner because I am a midwife.  Well, in my part of the world,
midwifery care is the standard offering to all women, it's publicly funded
without regard to income level, we have no private maternity care
institutions, and if you want someone who isn't a midwife to catch your
baby, you'd need to move to another country, or give birth outside an
institution without telling a midwife because if a midwife knew, she would
be obliged to help you as needed, as long as she wasn't ill, drunk, or busy
helping some other woman.  At CS, the operating obstetrician hands the baby
off to one of us.  The same goes for instrumental vaginal delivery.  We are
the ones who have to arrange for a neonatologist if necessary; we're
responsible for seeing to it that the baby gets the right care in the
immediate post partum period.  That's our job, and it is certainly not part
of the 'alternative' care system.  It IS the care system.

It may amuse some of you to know that in European obstetric circles, US
obstetrics is considered 'radical' because of its high-intervention,
high-tech approach for most women, since there is no evidence to support the
usefulness or even safety of that approach for normal pregnant women.
Brazilian obstetrics is even more radical, but there are pockets in the US
where you might think you were in Rio de Janeiro too.  

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway where the sun is shining on lots of snow today

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