Sovereign Womanhood and the Misappropriation of Reproduction

We DO have so much power in us. So then how do we end up filing into our hospitals with our birth plans and coming out cut or broken, with a baby in our arms?

All over the world, and especially all over North America, women are finding new ways to birth in their own sovereign power. This can be terrifying. It can be fulfilling. It can be both.

I am speaking to old women who are attending birthing mothers as Traditional Birth Companions. I speak with younger women, mothers of young children themselves, who are devoting their time to attending the births of the women in their communities. I am speaking with women who have said "No!" to the maternity care system we have installed in our countries, and who are giving birth alone or with their families. I see sisters helping sisters. I see communities that are thriving, attending each other in birth, as in life.

Here in Canada, we have very strict regulations about what constitutes someone's right to provide care to a woman during her childbearing year. If you perform any of these restricted practices, without an officially regulated midwifery license, and without being employed by and liable to the health services establishment, then you are practising midwifery without a license.

Billie Harrigan is a Traditional Birth Companion in Ontario. She does not perform restricted practices, and she does not call herself a midwife. She says that Vaginal exams are rude, but also that they constitute a very clear message that our reproductive life and our bodies are not our property: they are the property of the state, and only people mandated by the state can invade them. Number 7 of the Ontario Midwifery Act states that vaginal exams are a restricted practice. In other words, you cannot put "an instrument, hand or finger beyond the labia majora or anal verge during pregnancy, labour and the post-partum period."

Ok, don't get me wrong here. I don't actually WANT to do vaginal exams. I also think they're rude. Not only that, my doula students have heard me say for years that the only reason for so many endless vaginal exams is that medical professionals are not taught about how sexual birth is. The sexuality and the mind-blowingness and the all-out intensity of birth is sublimated into rituals such as vaginal exams (actually, it is absolutely amazing to feel a baby's head in someone's vagina. Just saying. But I keep my hands to myself.)

But my point is, that women have been regulated for far too long. Our bodies have been misappropriated by a maternity system that pretends it is doing things to us for our own good, and it is not. Why do you think many a woman going into the hospital wants (or discovers she needs) a doula by her side? Because the doula can try to prevent some of the grosser abuses from taking place. But not all. And certainly not enough. Not enough to make the difference to so many, many women who feel that they have been violated (and they have!) when all they wanted to do was to give birth to their child.

So, what is happening? Just when the pandemic started making our lives more restricted and difficult, women started wanting to birth away from Covid-infested hospitals. We all, as our lives changed, started to take deep breaths and realize that we don't actually want to go back to the old "normal". I am getting weekly calls and emails from women who want to learn about new ways of birthing. I'm connecting with women around the globe who are moving forward to change the face of birth; to change the world, starting with birth.

Want to come on board? Come along!

“Come, come, whoever you are. 

Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. 

It doesn't matter. 

Ours is not a caravan of despair. 

Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. 

Come, yet again, come, come.” 

Rumi

And, if you are one of us who has indeed experienced trauma, abuse, and despair during your birthing, even more reason for you to move away from that reality, bring your scars and hold your head up high and cry out: "Enough!"

What is to be done?

You can listen to the Baby Magic Podcast for inspiration.

You can join my Traditional Birth Attendant seminar.

You can reach out to me or to any of the fine women on our podcast for community, information, wisdom.

You can reach deep into your womanhood and remember that you are strong! You are magical! I love you!

For those of you who have a legal interest:

Here are the restricted practices in Quebec:
"Any act the purpose of which is to provide the professional care and services required by a woman during normal pregnancy, labour and delivery and to provide a woman and her child with the professional care and services required during the first six weeks of a normal postnatal period constitutes the practice of midwifery. The professional care and services concerned consist in
(1) monitoring and assessing a woman and her child during pregnancy, labour, delivery and the first six weeks of the postnatal period, and include the provision of preventive care and the detection of any abnormal conditions in the woman or child ;
(2) conducting spontaneous deliveries ;
(3) performing an amniotomy, performing and repairing an episiotomy and repairing a first or second degree perineal tear or laceration.


In addition, in an emergency, while awaiting the required medical intervention or in the absence of medical intervention, applying suction, conducting a breech delivery, performing manual placental extraction followed by digital exploration of the uterus or performing resuscitation procedures on the woman or newborn also constitutes the practice of midwifery."
(http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/ShowDoc/cs/S-0.1
In Ontario, they are much less vague:


"1. Communicating a diagnosis identifying, as the cause of a woman’s or newborn’s symptoms, a disease or disorder that may be identified from the results of a laboratory or other test or investigation that a member is authorized to order or perform on a woman or a newborn during normal pregnancy, labour and delivery and for up to six weeks post-partum.

2. Managing labour and conducting spontaneous normal vaginal deliveries.

3. Inserting urinary catheters into women.

4. Performing episiotomies and amniotomies and repairing episiotomies and lacerations, not involving the anus, anal sphincter, rectum, urethra and periurethral area.

5. Administering, by injection or inhalation, a substance designated in the regulations.

6. Prescribing drugs designated in the regulations.

7. Putting an instrument, hand or finger beyond the labia majora or anal verge during pregnancy, labour and the post-partum period.

8. Administering suppository drugs designated in the regulations beyond the anal verge during pregnancy, labour and the post-partum period.

9. Taking blood samples from newborns by skin pricking or from persons from veins or by skin pricking.

10. Intubation beyond the larynx of a newborn.

11. Administering a substance by injection or inhalation as provided for in subsection 4.1 (2). 2009, c. 26, s. 16 (1). (https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/91m31)"

The Language of Loss

The word "miscarriage" implies that somehow the carrier fucked up. The woman's body wasn't effective in "carrying" the fetus to a healthy end: a live birth. "They" say early miscarriage, that is, before about 10 weeks, happens in around 15% of all pregnancies, but I don't know how you could really tell since many very early pregnancy losses would be interpreted as a heavy period.

Anyway, this word "miscarriage" started to be used in the context of pregnancy loss in the 1500s. A more useful word is abortion: "ab" is a prefix that indicates that something didn't happen; "-ortion" comes from "oriri": I rise, get up. I appear, become visible. I am born, come to exist, originate. So, an abortion doesn't place blame on the carrier, it just names what happened, that the baby didn't come to exist.

Many women who suffer pregnancy loss keep it to themselves. They don't tell their stories, either because they feel ashamed that they lost the baby, or because they're worried about what other people will say, or because they don't know how to express the grief they feel. Women who decide to have therapeutic abortions, also, keep their decisions private, don't know how people will react, and don't know how to express the real emotional fact that although they decided to end the pregnancy, they still feel grief.

The reasons for early pregnancy loss are mostly unknown. Some causes could be a lack of progesterone, an embryo with chromosomal malformations,  an ectopic or abdominal pregnancy, and other reasons that remain a mystery to us. Later pregnancy loss is even more of an unknown and usually the result of an abnormality that would be incompatible with life. Unfortunately, intimate partner abuse is a recognized cause of pregnancy loss up to and including the late third trimester, as are other forms of trauma.

There are studies and statistics that talk about all of these things, but basically when it happens to you, your statistic boils down to 100%. If you've never had a pregnancy loss, it shoots down to 0%. Most women during a normal reproductive life will be pregnant a few times, have a live baby or two, and lose a couple of pregnancies, either on purpose or not. 

But the reality of losing a pregnancy, especially a later one, is something that women don't talk about much, and that means that when it does happen to you, you feel like you have nowhere to turn. People don't know how to react: they'll suggest that you should've taken certain vitamins, seen a different care provider, or done yoga. They won't know how to deal with your grief. As a whole, this society is awful at coping with any kind of pain, whether it be physical or emotional. So losing a baby is just one of those things it's best not to talk about.

Baby Magic, the podcast, is a place where women tell their stories. This week I spoke to Laura about her son's birth during her second trimester, and about how she and her family coped with the loss, learned from his birth, and what she believes women need during this difficult unfolding of the childbearing year.

Baby Magic Podcast