Midwives for Freedom
Homeschooling is one traditionally conservative issue that I believe Democrats need to do a better job of supporting and expanding. As a male, I haven't really considered the issue of midwives until now. Like homeschooling, on the surface it appears to be oriented toward the "family values" crowd on the right. But standing up against the state's attempt to create a health care monopoly is always the right thing to do.
According to Indiana law, though, the midwife who assisted Ms. Hendrix-Petry, Mary Helen Ayres, committed a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. Ms. Ayres was, according to the state, practicing medicine and midwifery without a license.
Doctors, legislators and prosecutors in Indiana and in the nine other states with laws prohibiting midwifery by people other than doctors and nurses say home births supervised by midwives present grave and unacceptable medical risks. Nurse-midwives in Indiana are permitted to deliver babies at home, but most work in hospitals.
Midwives see it differently. They say the ability of women to choose to give birth at home is under assault from a medical establishment dominated by men who, for reasons of money and status, resent a centuries-old tradition that long ago anticipated the concerns of modern feminism.
Do you think that homeschooling and midwifery are viable local and state issues to rally around or not?



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