Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier

This book addresses the politics of global health and social justice issues around birth, focusing on dynamic communities that have chosen to speak truth to power by reforming dysfunctional health care systems or creating new ones outside the box. The chapters present models of childbirth at extreme ends of a spectrum-from the conflict zones and disaster areas of Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, and Indonesia, to high-risk tertiary care settings in China, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. Debunking notions about best care, the volume illustrates how human rights in health care are on a collision course with global capitalism and offers a number of specific solutions to this ever-increasing problem. This volume will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in anthropology, sociology, health, and midwifery, as well as for practitioners, policy makers, and organizations focused on birth or on social activism in any arena.

Betty-Anne Daviss has served as a midwife for 45 years and is internationally renowned as a breech expert and researcher on home birth and ethnography in childbirth. She is Adjunct Professor at the Pauline Jewett Institute of Gender and Women's Studies, Carleton University, Canada, and has privileges at l'Hôpital Montfort and the Ottawa Hospital. Robbie Davis-Floyd is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University, Houston, Texas. She is a well-known international speaker and researcher on transformational models in childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics.

Introduction: Speaking Truth to Power for Social Justice in Pregnancy and Childbirth PART 1: MODELS SPEAKING TRUTH THROUGH INDEPENDENCE: INCORPORATING LOCAL PRACTITIONERS TO KEEP COMMUNITY BIRTH SAFE 1. Bumi Sehat Bali: Birth on the Checkered Cloth 2. To Bring Back Birth Is To Bring Back Life: The Nunavik Story 3. Home-Based Lifesaving Skills: Harnessing Local Leaders to Prevent Maternal and Perinatal Mortality PART 2: MODELS THAT TACKLE THREATS TO NORMAL BIRTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES OF ACCESS TO CARE 4. "There's something wrong here": African American Women and Their Babies Are at Greatest Risk in the USA 5. Bringing Back Breech: Dismantling Hierarchies and Re-Skilling Practitioners 6. What Made her Think She Could Win in Court? Models of Success in Seeking Justice Across Cultures in a Neoliberal World 7. What If Another 10% of Deliveries Occurred at Home or in a Birth Center? The Economics and Politics of Out-of-Hospital Birth in the United States 8. Changing Childbirth in China: Family Support Still Has Its Place in Maternity Care PART 3: MODELS IN TROUBLED AREAS: CONFLICT, POST-CONFLICT, OR DISASTER 9. Implementing the International Childbirth Initiative (ICI) in Disaster Zones: Bumi Sehat's Experience from Aceh, Haiti, the Philippines, and Nepal 10. Israeli and Palestinian Midwives: Birthing Peace 11. Scraping Maternity Care Off the Back Burner in Afghanistan: Reminding "Multi-Sector" Funding to Include the Community 12. Three Generations of Rural Community Midwifery in the Philippines: Through War, Earthquake, Tsunami, and Now a War on Homebirth PART 4: PRAGMATIC MODELS: CHALLENGING BIRTH MANAGEMENT NORMS AND NURTURING PROFESSIONAL COOPERATION 13. Cooperative Competition among the Professions: Pizza and Other Keys to Disarmament in Canada 14. Birth with No Regret in Turkey 15. Where There Are No Doctors: Shifting Major Surgical Operations to Non-Physician Clinics for Better Outcomes in Mozambique and Tanzania 16. Solitary and Kin-Assisted Rarámuri Births: Ideals and Realities Conclusion: Speaking Truth to Power Individually and Collectively Will Redistribute the Power