From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] [Fwd: April 4 column - midwife arrested]
Date: 3 Apr 1999 07:03:45 -0500
To: piml@egroups.com


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Vin Suprynowicz wrote:
> 
>     FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
>     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED APRIL 4, 1999
>     THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
>     'Women should be free to choose'
> 
>     On Jan. 8, lay midwife Kellie Sparkman delivered the infant Sarai
> Coreas-Cruz at the Las Vegas home of Ruth Coreas-Cruz and Tito Cruz. The
> infant survived and is now doing fine.
> 
>   Shortly after the birth, midwife Sparkman worried the child was having
> trouble breathing. She decided to drive the infant to the emergency room at
> Sunrise Hospital, where little Sarai was diagnosed with respiratory
> problems stemming from having inhaled meconium, which happens in 15 to 25
> percent of births.
> 
>   Hospital physicians are required to report any suspected case of child
> abuse or neglect to police. Lindy Casey, a certified Boulder City midwife,
> explains what appears to have happened next:
> 
>   "If the hospital believes a care provider has withheld the treatment of
> choice then they define that as endangerment. Their protocol would have
> called for transporting to the hospital by ambulance, earlier. Because she
> didn't follow their protocol, they interpret that as delaying the treatment
> of choice."
> 
>   And there certainly is dispute about whether an ambulance would have been
> the  best way to go. "During an emergency newborn transport, I witnessed a
> paid EMS crew that did not know what to do with a baby that was not
> breathing, were equipped only with an adult sized resuscitation mask and
> probably failed to oxygenate a compromised baby while fumbling to do
> non-essential work en route to the hospital," writes in Yvonne Lapp Cryns
> of Richmond, Ill., who is both a certified midwife and an Emergency Medical
> Technician.
> 
>   Nonetheless, hospital physicians reported midwife Sparkman to police on a
> charge of child endangerment. On March 26, Las Vegas police arrested
> Sparkman, locking her up till she was able to post $3,000 bail.
> 
>   "The police made a decision to charge her with 'child neglect with
> substantial bodily harm' and that makes it a felony," explains Ms.
> Sparkman's attorney, Kirk Kennedy. "I think this is someone trying to make
> an example of her. The statute requires an act of willfulness on the part
> of my client, but the child is doing fine, the parents of the child
> continue to have a good relationship with my client; they allowed my client
> to come over and see the child the next day. In my personal opinion, this
> is coming from one or two doctors at Sunrise who are trying to get rid of
> midwives."
> 
>   A large number of e-mail correspondents to the Las Vegas Review-Journal
> in the week since Ms. Sparkman's arrest unanimously view the arrest as part
> of a medical conspiracy to shut down home birth and midwifery in Nevada.
> 
>   "It amazes me that doctors have lost women and babies and you never hear
> about it, but as soon as a midwife has a complication a crime has been
> committed," writes a mother from Illinois. "Go on, continue the witch-hunt,
> but home birth is here to stay because women like me who have been sliced,
> diced, humiliated and degraded are out there educating other women on the
> safety of home birth!"
> 
>   "We thought the days when we were looked at as witches were well behind
> us," wrote midwife Simone Valk from Rotterdam. "It seems that on the brink
> of the new millennium, Nevada steps back into the dark era of the Middle
> Ages."
> 
>   Writing from Washington, D.C., Dr. Marsden Wagner, former director of
> maternal and child health for the California State Department of Health,
> and for 15 years regional officer for women's and children's health for the
> World Health Organization, wrote: "The arrest ... is a clear example of
> doctors harassing midwives in an attempt to eliminate competition."
> 
>   Reached in Washington Friday, Dr. Wagner had a lot more to say: "The
> doctors don't understand, much less accept, that there's another way to do
> births. ... There is a major obstetric lobby across the United States
> running around saying it's dangerous."
> 
>   Studies show the "decision-to-incision" time at hospitals averages 20 to
> 30 minutes, reports Dr. Wagner, who was named the UCLA medical school's
> alumnus of the year in 1995. "So home births within 30 minutes of a
> hospital are just as safe."
> 
>   One-third of all births in the Netherlands are planned home births, "and
> they lose fewer babies than we do."
> 
>   Why? "We're trained to do something, when with regard to childbirth often
> the most important thing is to do nothing, to let nature take its course."
> 
>   For example, Dr. Wagner points out more than half the women who give
> birth in American hospitals receive episiotomies. "They have their vaginas
> cut open, even though science says the rate should never be over 20
> percent. The surgeons are trained to cut. They believe a cut is better than
> a tear, that it'll heal better, but that's wrong. It's treating birth like
> a surgical procedure. They put everyone in a cap and gown and a mask,
> including the mother and the father. They put her up on a surgical table.
> It predisposes everyone to do surgery. The Caesarean section rate in this
> country is 20 percent. It used to be 25 percent. In Sweden it's 10 percent
> and they lose the fewest children in the world."
> 
>   Midwifery is making inroads, with as many as 5 to 6 percent of American
> births now occurring at home, Dr. Wagner estimates. (Lindy Casey figures
> only half of 1 percent of Las Vegas births are home births.)
> 
>   The largest health maintenance organization in New Mexico -- Lovelace --
> now has more midwives than obstetricians on staff, "and 80 percent of their
> births are midwife births," Dr. Wagner reports.
> 
>   "Several years ago the president of the American College of Obstetricians
> and Gynecologists stood up and said 'Home birth is child abuse'. My
> educated guess is this case will be dropped. But what will have happened
> is, the Nevada midwives will have been shot at and they will be nervous,
> and that's what the doctors want. And the public will have gotten the idea
> that home birth is not safe.
> 
>   "The fundamental issue here is freedom. Women should be free to choose
> where they want to give birth. And the more HMOs start to promote home
> births, the more vigorous is the reaction you're going to get from people
> whose pocketbooks are threatened."
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
> Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available
> through 1-800-244-2224, or web site
> http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
> 
> ***
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com
> 
> The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
> Hay, 1872
> 
> The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
> get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
> to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
> soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
> against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
> 
> * * *

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