The Student Midwife Summer Issue, Volume One | Page 5

(Cassidy 31). Doctors looking for more
patients began to attend births and competing
with midwives for clients. Because of this
competition for clients, there was a
widespread defamation of midwifery, which
ultimately outlawed the practice of midwifery
in most states. Male doctors ousting female
midwives is a strong expression of how
sexism and capitalism overlap. Male doctors
of the late 19th century constructed female
midwives as ignorant, backwards and dirty, a
gender power struggle was created. An
example of upper class men using their
gendered authority and power in order to
repress working women.
Doctors promised pain relief and a guarantee
of safety. This kind of propaganda worked and
as a result, midwifery in the US rapidly lost
favor. And without a second thought
midwifery was almost left behind. By 1910
midwives were catching only about half of the
births in the US and by 1973 less than 1%
(Cassidy, p.31)! This marks an era when the
US pathologizing women and pregnancy
began in earnest. With the 20th century came
the infamous “Twilight Sleep” labor method.
Using a dose of morphine for pain and
scopolamine to erase the memory of labor,
this technique was widely used in hospitals.

5

Drugged, unconscious and unaware, women
delivered their children in a hazy nightmare.
In 1933 Dr. Read wrote Natural Birth, which
discussed how women are taught from
childhood to fear childbirth. Dr. Read
theorized that fear brings tension and tension
brings pain and that this together made
childbirth more difficult. The lack of
education, support and positive talk to
women about their bodies and the birthing
process leaves women unaware of what is
occurring in their own body and their
children. It is only reasonable that a woman
would not feel capable to delivering her own
child, even with the skilled and supportive
care of professionals.
During the Women’s Liberation movement
during the 1970’s, women took back their
agency and autonomy, including in childbirth.
Feminism constructed birth not as a
punishment but as a rewarding and powerful
experience. Owning birth as part of a
woman's powerful femininity was a central
theory in early US feminist movements. The
idea of women centered birth, empowering
women to take back the birth process, to have
confidence in their bodies and be free to birth
in a way that felt right to each woman. The
natural birth movement sprung from these