The erasure of women from midwifery is a concerning trend
During a late 2022 episode of the Down to Birth Show podcast, home birth Midwife Lindsey Meehleis shared the story of a midwife colleague invited to speak at a birthing conference. The organizers requested to review her speech and then informed the midwife, “You must replace every single reference to woman, mother, and breastfeeding. You cannot use any of those words.”
However, the midwife refused and headed home.
This woman is one of a growing number of midwives resisting the social pressure of this new politically-correct Orthodoxy. They have been overwhelmed by the response, booking clients sharing similar sentiments at a rate they can barely keep up with.
The image of a midwife as a crunchy progressive feminist, openly evangelizing about the empowering experience of becoming a mother, is what has made the anti-woman transformation of midwifery over the last several years exceedingly disheartening.
The website of any homebirth midwife hardly contains the words “woman” or “mother” or any gender-specific language. A random example: the website for 10 Moons Midwifery in the Bay Area proclaims “Midwifery care is feminist healthcare” but then goes on to say “Midwifery is person-centered.”
Furthermore, midwives have also altered their vocabulary to be more “inclusive.” Women and mothers have become generic “people” or “parents” or “birthing folks” to appease the language police concerned with offending transgender parents-to-be.
However, some midwives, such as Shannon Staloch of Midwives Bay Area, are taking a different approach. On their website, Midwives Bay Area doesn’t shy away from using the words “mom” and “women,” and this has led to an explosion of demand that Staloch can barely keep up with.
Trisha Ludwig, a licensed midwife and co-host of the popular Down to Birth Show, echoed Staloch’s experience and emphasized that “We’re seeing that women are choosing providers based on language first. Does the provider’s website say ‘woman, breastfeeding and mother’ or ‘person, chestfeeding and parent’?”
The erasure of biological sex from midwifery over the last few years has left countless women without a trusted partner, which has real implications, especially in the medical world. Cynthia Overgard, a childbirth educator and the other co-host of the Down to Birth Show, stated, “We can’t improve women’s health when we deny that pregnancy is a women’s health issue in the first place.”
The erasure of femininity from the experience of motherhood isn’t just bad for business and women’s health, it’s a betrayal of the core of midwifery’s unique model of care. Unlike physicians in hospitals, midwives are intended to be client-centric and holistic.
However, their very client base — women and mothers — are at the center of a culture war that they didn’t start and have no place in fighting.
The most famous American midwife, Ina May Gaskin, notably said “Ask the woman, she will tell you everything you need to know.” That is the essence of midwifery: a celebration of the strength of women in the most empowering experience a woman can have. An experience only a woman can have.
