Victory!!!

We have received word that HB 695 will not make it out of committee, due to “the overwhelming concern from the people”!! Thank you to everyone who called or emailed the legislators, urged your friends to do so, spread the word in any way, or just sent happy thoughts! [Ok, but I'm enough of a [...]

Local news coverage on the Mississippi Midwives bill

WMC-TV5 (the local NBC affiliate in Memphis) covered the story on HB 695 which is in committee in the State Senate. Read past posts for more info, but the nutshell version is that it would restrict “the practice of midwifery” to CNMs only, which would effectively make homebirth illegal, since there are few or more [...]

My letter to my fellow Mississippians and my state Senators

My note on facebook which I slightly altered into a letter to the Mississippi Senators: I was shocked to find out today that HB 695 which would amend current Mississippi state law to restrict the practice of midwifery to only Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) has passed the House and is in the Senate. This is [...]

Mississippi Midwives Facebook Group

If you’re on facebook, you can join this group to keep up with the latest news on the legislation to outlaw non-nurse midwives. If you know of any other groups or organizations, big or small, official or unofficial, please let me know so we can join forces. Thanks!

Making Mississippi Midwives Illegal

I was horrified to find out that a bill has passed the Mississippi House of Representatives, and was sent to the Senate, to make CNMs the only legal midwives in Mississippi. My state was one of the few that was “alegal” — there was no language specifically protecting or prohibiting non-nurse midwives. While it’s too [...]

“You’re not instilling a lot of confidence into me, Doc!”

Thus said Marty McFly in Back to the Future. The scene was Doc Brown simulating the lightning bolt that would send Marty in the DeLorean back to 1985… and the model car caught fire. But it works for this news as well: research doctor is accused of having falsified data in at least 21 studies [...]

Prevent C-sections — learn about cervical scar tissue

This was an interesting post, and I thought I’d pass it along. If you’ve ever had a procedure done on your cervix (including, surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells, and, rarely, a D&C), you may have scarring, which can cause slow or no dilation, despite adequate contractions. One to save in the files…

Just the facts, ma’am…

Using the World Health Organization’s 2005 maternal mortality statistics, and this summary of abortion laws, I put together the chart below, which I ordered from lowest to highest maternal mortality rate. The figure I used for maternal mortality was the official number or estimate, although many countries had a wide “range of uncertainty” (for instance, [...]

Abortion and Maternal Mortality

In response to my previous post about feminism, someone wrote (in part) why she supports abortion: And wanting to dismantle those structures is why I support reproductive rights. In a different world, abortion would be unnecessary. Women’s lives would never be endangered by a pregnancy, no woman would ever be forced to get pregnant by [...]

What is a feminist? Are you a feminist?

This topic has been floating around in my head for quite some time — ever since I read a blog post which had a laundry list of “things feminists believe,” and if you said “yes” to any one of them, then you were (by their definition) a feminist. The two points I remember most clearly [...]