National Organization for Women and Midwifery.

Hello Friends and Colleagues! I am the co-director, along with Mary Ceallaigh, of the California Association of Midwives' Midwifery Childbirth Awareness Projects (MCAP). We are the non-profit, educational arm of CAM. Our purpose is to educate the public about midwifery and childbirth alternatives and to facilitate communication among midwives and other health care professionals.

Our presence at the National Organization for Women (NOW) National Conference held in Los Angeles over the 4th of July weekend shows the results that can happen when we build coalitions with other organizations. For those of us who have long worked in women's health and who have tirelessly worked to advance midwifery and expand options for childbearing women, the NOW Resolution on Choices in Childbirth was indeed a victory!

The whole process of bringing it about was miraculous and full of divine intervention or perhaps synchronicity, whichever explanation you prefer, and happened because we were in the right place at the right time with the intention to educate about choices in childbirth.

As a result of my dialogue with Susan Hodges, president of Citizens for Midwifery (CFM), about making the midwifery display I created for California Association of Midwives' community education projects available for CFM chapters nationwide, Suzette Henderson of Now--Ohio contacted me, and encouraged me to get an exhibit space at the NOW national conference to share our display, which just so happened to be held this year in Los Angeles, where I live. Suzette had recently passed an amendment to Now--Ohio's resolution on reproductive rights, but she had been unsuccessful in getting National NOW to adopt such a resolution, and that is why she asked MCAP to come educate.

MCAP got an information table, we paid for two admission tickets for my co-director, Mary Ceallaigh, and I to attend, and MCAP joined NOW. At first, it seemed the conference was going to be too expensive for us to have an exhibition table, and as we decided to go with an information only table, there was no place for us to sit and "schmooze" at the exhibition space. Disappointed, Mary decided not to attend the conference.

I decided to go to one session on working with the media, and got some hot tips on getting our message out, which I'd love to share with you all sometime. The first miracle was that the facilitator of this workshop was not only a PR expert, but also a breastfeeding mother, and she shared with me her passion for breastfeeding and support for midwifery. (She is in San Diego.)

The second miracle was that the conference coordinator had an extra exhibit table and so she offered it to MCAP at no additional cost! So I scooped up the CFM fact sheets and the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) and CAM brochures off of the table where they were lost among the info from 50 other organizations, and placed them on our very own table in the exhibition area.

I set up our midwifery display that says "Pregnant? Consider A Midwife" and features beautiful color photos of women giving birth and midwives and babies--a real crowd stopper. No one can walk by without stopping to look and read! in fact, in an hour, about six young women came by asking questions about midwives, homebirth, birth centers, and labor assistants. I gave them each a mini-lecture on the benefits of midwifery.

Some older women came by and shared their tales of their ordeals in the delivery room and the wondrous natural births of their grandchildren. The women who perused our table scarfed up most of the handouts. I was so excited by our enthusiastic welcome, I called Mary and urged her to come back and bring more information sheets to disseminate, as the materials were nearly gone!

Mary and I ended up going into the "Health and Reproduction Committee Hearing" and, not knowing what to expect, we anticipated the format would be a dialogue on pertinent women's health issues We intended to represent the midwifery profession in the discussion, fueled by our frustration that the scope of reproductive rights espoused in many feminist circles was limited to the right to have a safe and legal abortion, and not women's choices around childbearing.

However, what occurred in that session couldn't have been better if we had planned it! When we walked in, a woman read my badge, which read "Midwifery Childbirth Awareness Project of California Association of Midwives" and said, "Are you here to present the midwifery amendment?" We had no idea what she was talking about, being totally naive as to the format of the NOW rules of order. She pointed us toward a woman who was hastily scratching out a proposal--on midwives! This woman was Linda McCabe, of Sonoma County NOW, a new mother who recently gave birth in a birth center with a midwife. Mary and I asked if we could help her draft her proposal, so we made a few suggestions here and there, as did Suzette Henderson of NOW-Ohio.

There were three women's health proposals up for vote that day, and only two could be sent to the general session. The stakes were high. Linda McCabe got up to read the midwifery amendment and there were many questions and concerns from the group, but also it was pointed out that the precedent to support midwifery issues was there.

Their concerns dealt with liability, hospital back.-up, accreditation, licensure, etc. I was able to educate them that there are two routes of entry into the profession of midwifery and educate them on the legal status, of midwives throughout the country, and national accreditation, as well as the usual questions about medical back-up, the direct-entry midwife's training, etc.

We had to make it clear that we were not advocating out-of-hospital birth for all women, rather we just wanted women to know about all their options for childbirth and to clarify our objective--which was to expand the definition of reproductive freedom to include choices in childbirth, including, but not limited to, the midwifery model of care.

Mary, Linda, Suzette, and I were totally of one mind on this--as if we had planned this day for months, and we were really a united force. As I spoke, Mary handed out the CFM fact sheets and MANA brochures about midwifery. Well, only two propositions could be sent to general vote, and ours made it! The proposal passed with 30 votes! Suzette said that last year, only 10 voted yes--this was progress!

We went to sleep that night waiting to hear if the proposal had been accepted in the general session the next day. We left our midwifery display up and the fact sheets out, hoping it would provide further education for fencesitters and doubters. I thought to myself, even if it doesn't pass, we just helped to educate 50 women in the Reproductive Rights Committee Meeting about the midwifery model and issues.

Now resolutions can be passed if they are unanimously accepted. If there are any concerns, they get tabled until later in the general session, and sometimes there are so many issues to deal with they run out of time and never get back to it before the session is over. There were a couple blocking concerns on our amendment, which turned out to be minor, having to do with removing the section that dealt with lobbying and legislative action on the part of NOW, so as not to overburden the already over-worked legislative aide, but with these issues removed, the amendment was ratified!

Apparently, the amendment will go out to all chapters of NOW continent-wide and serve as an official position statement regarding the definition of reproductive freedom including childbirth choices, and as the resolution reads, all of their materials pertaining to Reproductive Freedom shall include references to Choices in Childbirth. I am now in the process of following up with them to make sure this is implemented.

As a result of having ratified this resolution, I was invited to attend a conference in Washington, DC for midwifery advocates with the leadership in MANA, MEAC (Midwifery Education Accreditation Council), North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), CFM, and state midwifery organizations to speak on a panel about coalition building. At this conference, we were trained in lobbying and dealing with the media.

We also went to Capitol Hill to lobby our representatives and congress people. I was nervous at first, having never lobbied before, but once I was there, I realized all it was was childbirth education--something I have been doing for a decade! My intention to educate was what got the NOW resolution passed, and all that I needed to do during those meetings with the senators was to educate them on choices in childbirth and the Midwifery Model of Care.

I had a meeting with California Senator Diane Fienstein's aide where I shared the NOW resolution and discussed the Midwifery Model of Care. I also spoke with my representative's aide and left information for Senator Barbara Boxer, although I was not able to obtain an appointment with her. This is just one possibility of how this NOW resolution can be used.

The ACNM and CFM so far have written letters to NOW president Patricia Ireland congratulating NOW for including childbirth in their scope of issues, and I encourage all individuals or organizations who wish to send letters to the national office or your local office of NOW to do so.

Patricia Ireland, President, NOW
National Organization for Women
1000 16th St. NW, Ste. 700
Washington, DC 20036

Please send me a copy of your letter for my file (see address/fax/e-mail below).

I encourage you to use this resolution to educate lawmakers, people in the media, individuals, and groups.

We have formed The Coalition for the Midwifery Model of Care, and the NOW resolution is being used as an example of how an organization can show support for the Midwifery Model of Care. If you know of organizations who might be willing to endorse the Midwifery Model of Care and join our coalition, contact Jeanne Kettles, 510-597-0868 or e-mail her at [e-mail].

To paraphrase Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated individuals working together can change the world. Indeed, that is all who ever has."

--Cordelia Hanna, BA, CCE, CBA (ALACE), Director, Midwifery Childbirth Awareness Project of California Association of Midwives, 333 E. Camino Real Ave., Monrovia, CA 91016; 626-358-2318 (voice); 626-358-9478 (fax); [e-mail].