If you're wondering in any way why now is the time to be BOLD read on...
In America childbirth politics is heating up, and not surprisingly thanks to a celebrity's heavy-hitting documentary on childbirth in America. Ricki Lake's film The Business of Being Born (www.buisnessofbeingborn.com) has got on ACOG's radar (well, we already knew this when several month ago they made an official statement slamming homebirth and referring indirectly to Lake's documentary). And this week we found out ACOG felt it had to propose a resolution for the American Medical Association to adopt a policy against "home deliveries" and in support of legislation "that helps ensure safe deliveries and healthy babies by acknowledging that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital" or accredited birth center.
The nutty policy was adopted this week.
Lake, along with the film's director Abby Epstein and Pushed author Jennifer Block shot back immediately in a letter posted on The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ricki-lake-jennifer-block-and-abby-epstein/docs-to-women-pay-no-atte_b_107845.html
The letter claims American MD's are "spooked" by the ground swelling of films, books and statistics that all point to a medical system that is not only not offering adequate birth choices for mothers, but actively standing in the way of women's civil rights.
A turf war between people who support birth choices for women and ACOG? That's what Lake, Epstein and Block suggest.
I'd like to think of it as the perfect pitch. ACOG has thrown American women The Perfect Pitch - a fast ball forcing women to stand up and actively speak out and demand better childbirth options for women.
As Lake says, and has always said, her film is not telling women how to give birth it's telling women to investigate their choices. And that if they want a powerful birth to not settle for less. This is the kind of BOLDness birth needs today.(I can't resist using the words of Lake's talk-show followers: Go Ricki!)
It's not surprising that BOLD performances are probably going to double this year despite a conscious decision inside BOLD to not grow much this year. You can't stop the pendulum once it's moving. The climate is right for people to get out and make some noise about childbirth in America.
The Perfect Pitch.
It's about time.
1 comment:
Wow! I had no idea things had changed so much! I gave birth in 1989,'91 & '93; all in the way I DECIDED. To think that there are those trying to legislate how a woman can give birth is just appalling! I came to the site because BIRTH sounded like an interesting show to audition for in Phoenix, but now I'd like to be involved because it IS important to help inform women of what is going on with our civil rights!
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