Renée Ann Cramer

Birthing a Movement

Midwives, Law, and the Politics of Reproductive Care

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

"This is the first ethnography of American midwives and their clients and advocates. The culmination of more than a decade of participant-observation, interviews, and archival research, this project specifically interrogates the potential and pitfalls of legal and political campaigns for reproductive autonomy"--

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. Februar 2021
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 155mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 499g
• ISBN-13: 9781503609839
• ISBN-10: 1503609839
• Artikelnr.: 59411430

Autorenporträt

Renée Ann Cramer is Chair and Professor of Law, Politics, and Society, and the Herb and Karen Baum Chair of Ethics in the Professions at Drake University. She is the author of Cash, Color, and Colonialism (2005) and Pregnant with the Stars (Stanford, 2015).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Knowing About Legality and Illegality in Midwifery Care in
the United States
chapter abstract
The introduction tells the story of Gina, a midwife working illegally at
the time of our interview. Using Gina's story as a frame of reference, the
introduction explains the varying legal status for midwives in the United
States and distinguishes certified professional midwives from other
professionals who attend labor and delivery. The introduction also provides
the theoretical and scholarly context for the rest of the book, focusing on
legal pluralism, legal consciousness, legal mobilization, and the limits of
law as it is implemented. Finally, the introduction explains my methodology
in both researching and presenting the data and argues that we need to tell
stories about law and society that are embodied, integrative, and
holistic-much like the care provided by midwives to their clients.
1History and Status of Midwives in the United States
chapter abstract
Chapter 1 begins with a story from Missouri after Ophelia, a certified
professional midwife, attends a birth that brings her to the attention of
the police. The chapter asks how we got to a place where a safe, qualified,
trained birth attendant can fear prosecution for a good-outcome birth. The
history of midwifery in the United States is one that combines
medicalization and professionalization of birth, imperatives of
nation-building through reproduction, and a renaissance in care that
brought the profession of non-nurse midwifery back from the brink of
extinction. Chapter 1 provides a version of that history, stressing that
this version is the one told by advocates and midwives as they seek to
expand access to care.
2Modern and Professional: Legitimating, Marketing, and Reimagining Midwives
chapter abstract
Chapter 2 demonstrates that, in the name of professionalization, midwives
have engaged in seeking legitimization of non-nurse midwifery via national
organizations,
3Mostly Happy Accidents: Successfully Mobilizing for Legal Status
chapter abstract
Chapter 3 explores the multiple ways that midwives and advocates use
politics to mobilize for legal status. Focusing on the success stories in
South Dakota and Missouri, it highlights how the long-term activism in both
states, combined with "happy accidents" or contingencies, facilitated the
passage of legalization bills. Midwives and advocates use traditional and
social media, letter-writing to legislators, and consistent presence in the
statehouse to get their bills passed. They also engage in novel
attention-seeking activities like making quilts and calendars, designing
T-shirts, and handing out M&M cookies (for "moms and midwives").
4Rights, Rules, and Regulation
chapter abstract
This chapter begins with the unusual story of how lawyers needed to defend
the constitutionality of the Missouri bill against claims by the Missouri
Medical Association, as a way to frame the examination the legal
mobilization undertaken on behalf of midwives nationwide. This mobilization
includes criminal defense of their practice and lawsuits brought on behalf
of victims of obstetric violence. It also includes seeking regulatory
governance in rulemaking, defining the scope of practice for midwives, and
articulating access to the state as a goal for the movement.
5Catching Babies and Catching Hell: Constitutive Interactions in the Limits
and Shadow of the Law
chapter abstract
Chapter 5 examines the various ways that midwives experience their daily
practices and finds that, even in states where they are legal and
regulated, the law limits and shadows how CPMs work. This limiting of the
law is related to cultural disapprobation of out-of-hospital birth and the
ways that that disapprobation is reinforced by friends, family, and
hospital staff. Chapter 5 shares the stories of midwives who find
constraints on their practice from the expressions of these norms and
details the difficulties they have finding insurance, finding back-up
physicians, and even knowing what the law is. It also shares stories of
midwives and mothers who "catch hell" when they discuss their
out-of-hospital birth plans or must transfer a client to the hospital for
emergency care.
6Deep Transformations, Deep Contradictions: Changing Birth Culture One
Movie, One Picnic, OneTiny Little Epistemological Shift at a Time
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the multiple ways that midwives and advocates seek to
change birth culture in any given locale, from hosting movies and picnics
to thinking through the proper role of hospital and state in labor and
delivery. It moves from eco-feminist midwifery advocacy in Berkeley,
California, to emergency childbirth classes in rural South Dakota,
highlighting the ways that locale shapes approaches to thinking about
midwifery care. Chapter 6 also focuses on the contradictions and tensions
within the pro-midwifery movement-around issues like abortion, vaccination
and homeschooling, rights-seeking, partisan politics, and the decision to
seek government intervention and approval at all. The goal in all of these
conversations is to facilitate expanded access to midwifery care and the
extension of reproductive justice to all who labor and deliver.
Conclusion: Attending to Birth in Sociolegal Scholarship: Embodied,
Interdisciplinary, and Authoritative Knowledge
chapter abstract
The conclusion offers closing thoughts on the relationship between
disciplinarity and regulation-seeing both as simultaneously emancipatory
and constraining. The conclusion examines the tensions within midwifery
communities, and within sociolegal scholarship, and argues that sitting
with those tensions in an embodied, interdisciplinary, authoritative
epistemology is the way to do good work in both settings.