Today’s main post is going to be about a review of the recent Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) paper by a professor of statistics. However, I don’t want Jan Tritten, Midwifery Today, MANA, Melissa Cheyney or anyone else sign with relief at the thought that we’ve moved on and they can just pretend that yet another dead baby never existed; hence this update.
Thusfar, 369 people have signed the petition that is being sent directly to Jan Tritten, the midwife who crowd sourced a life and death decision with her Facebook friends:
Jan Tritten,
We wish to express our revulsion at your unprofessional behavior and the resulting death of a baby.
If you have not signed yet, please consider doing so in memory of the baby who died a preventable death.
In response to the #notburiedtwice campaign, the homebirth midwifery community seems to have moved into full “deny responsibility” mode. They are quite good at it; after all, they have lots of practice.
Midwifery Today has responded with this gems:
And then a more considered attempt at avoiding accountability of any kind:
- It wasn’t Jan’s patient! Irrelevant. Health care providers aren’t waitresses who can walk right by declaring, “Not my table.”
- There was a physician involved! Really? Jan specifically stated that she did NOT have to transfer care to a physician.
- We’re going to delete everything and bury this dead baby twice, once in a tiny coffin in the ground and then again by deleting his existence! Not this time, you’re not.
We haven’t heard a lot from the larger homebirth community, but they are out there and they are worried.
Doula Cole Deelah offers a not so subtle warning to anyone thinking of breaking ranks for something as a trivial as a dead baby.
English to English translation:
If we don’t protect Jan Tritten from accountability when a baby dies, who will protect us from accountability when we let babies die?
Unwittingly quite revealing, no? Homebirth midwives don’t hold each other accountable in the death of a baby because they don’t want to be held accountable when they let babies die. Instead they will hold rallies for the midwife, scream “persecution,” and try to delete from public consciousness the fact that the baby ever existed .
But this time, we’re not going to let them. This baby will be #notburiedtwice.
