midwifery

Thirty-eight of 58 countries surveyed may fail to meet their target of 95 percent coverage by skilled attendants by 2015 unless an additional 120,000 midwives are trained, deployed and retained. A new report also indicates that upgrading midwifery services could save more than 3.6 million lives each year by 2015.

The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), the worldwide professional association of midwives, is holding their first meeting in Africa this week, in Durban, South Africa. The focus is on ensuring the women of the world have safe pregnancies and increased access to medical services.

Today, like every day, nearly 1000 women will die giving life; and many of their babies will not survive beyond the first hours and days after birth.

The pro-choice movement and the birthing community alike are waking up to the fact that abortion rights and the rights of childbearing women are inextricably linked.

The midwife is the first point of referral for the pre-conceptual, the pregnant, the labouring, the post-natal mother, the skilled attendant for the new born; teacher, guide, support, medical helper. And a first-responder in preventing fistula.

Draft regulations in the UK aim to tell women the truth about abortion, Medicaid-covered midwifery in Idaho, the Pope talks to doctors instead of women, Wyoming rejects mandatory ultrasound bill, and dramatic reductions in unplanned pregnancies by giving women a year of birth control at a time. 

Kanye West's bad-mood-producing abortion tweet; NYC's racist, anti-choice billboard; the Tea Party's "we're not interested in the culture wars" culture-war agenda setting thus far; and midwifery saves money!

Iowa's personhood bill has passed the House; President Obama's FY 2012 budget and women's and girls' health; a new kind of HIV vaccine; and Mississippi midwifery!

In a less well-known but no less controversial effort to find "common ground" a Home Birth Consensus summit seeks to bridge a divide between those who support and those who oppose expanded access to homebirth.

It's the bill advocates are calling "the solution to the Illinois home birth maternity care crisis" and some have been waiting 30 years for its passage. But a strong and active state medical association is blocking the bill at every turn. Why?