I’ve written often about the fact that homebirth midwives, CPMs (certified professional midwives), aren’t really midwives, just laypeople who awarded themselves a made up credential because they couldn’t be bothered to get a real midwifery degree. They lack the education and training of ALL other midwives in the industrialized world and would not be eligible for licensure in The Netherlands, the UK, Australia, Canada or anywhere else.
Statistics, datasets and scientific papers confirm that they have appalling rates of perinatal mortality. For example, in the State of Oregon in 2012, LICENSED homebirth midwives attending PLANNED homebirths had a perinatal mortality rate 800% higher than comparable risk hospital birth.
What’s less well known is that homebirth midwives demonstrate an appalling callousness toward the growing pile of tiny dead bodies they have left in their wake. Lest we forget, homebirth midwife Katie Jenkins McCall parachuted in yesterday to vividly demonstrate that callousness.
Who is Katie Jenkins McCall?
She is a homebirth midwife with a felony conviction from the State of California who set up the Facebook page for Sisters-in-Chains.
The Facebook page documents the “persecution” of American homebirth midwives for no better reason than a bunch of dead babies and a few injured mothers.
It does not mention a single dead baby by name; in fact, in the case of many of the deaths, neither the babies, not the fact of their deaths are mentioned at all.
How dare they hold homebirth practitioners accountable over something as trivial as a dead baby, or a mother who was injured … or for anything at all??!!
In June 2014, Katie was “feeling angry.” Why? Because her buddy, self-proclaimed “midwife” Vicki Dawn Sorensen, was arrested just because she allegedly presided over the death of a very premature baby after insisting that homebirth would be fine, interfered with an ambulance crew trying to rescue a hemorrhaging mother, lied on medical records, and may have multiple dead babies buried on her property.
Yesterday, Katie dropped by the comments section:
I took the opportunity to ask her how she sleeps at night knowing she is supporting people who let babies die just to get their birth junkie high (and get paid for it).
I learned a lot.
Katie couldn’t care less about the dead babies. In 133 comments (and counting), McCall has not mentioned a dead baby by name or circumstance, has not expressed grief, regret or anger about these deaths and instead treated us to an exposition of her philosophy, which apparently involves opposition to “statism” among other things. It’s difficult to pin Katie down, but as far as I could determine, she holds two wholly incompatible beliefs.
1. Acknowledging that homebirth professional organizations have no safety standards, she views the courts as the appropriate recourse for women whose babies have been injured and died.
2. She considers government attempts to regulate homebirth midwives and legal efforts (the courts) to hold midwives to those standards as unethical. Of as she so charmingly put it:
Because everyone knows guberment=ethics.
And those who hid Jews from the Nazis should have been cages because it was not “a legal option in (their) country.” *headesk*
I think we’ve come to the heart of the matter. McCall doesn’t want any safety standards at all. She want to leave regulation up to the government and then cry “tyranny” when the government acts on those regulations.
There’s a word for that: it’s hypocrisy.
According to Katie:
I believe organizations and local communities can set standards abs [sic] midwives can voluntarily agree to abide by them. And then ultimately, mothers can decide what kind of support they wish at their birth and choose a midwife according to the standards they prefer. Very simple, Amy.
And that gets to the core problem with homebirth midwifery. McCall and other homebirth midwives don’t want standards because they don’t want to be held accountable. They want to enjoy their birth junkie high, get some cash, and have no responsibility beyond entertaining themselves.
I understand that. That’s what I’ve accused homebirth midwives of doing all along. It’s nice to have Katie confirm it.
Katie Jenkins McCall and her homebirth midwifery colleagues would do well to keep the words of John Gardner in mind:
Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.
