A Midwife in the USA needs our help

Rowan Bailey is a Midwife in my extended community. She helped deliver my friends's beautiful child, four years ago. Rowan has been arrested on a charge of murder! I don't know any of the details. Here is a link to a donation page to help her raise bail. Please help her in any way you can. Thank you.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/he...how_todos=true

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You have a choice to make.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013, a friend, teacher, mentor, and fellow midwife, Rowan Bailey, as we know and love her was arrested for murder in Asheville, NC. North Carolina prohibits the practice of midwifery by traditional community midwives and CPM's.

At this time, the details of the case are not available until we have more input from Rowan's attorney.

Pregnancy and birth are the most natural processes in the human experience. This process has been supported, facilitated and protected since the dawn of time by the midwife. Today, in the United States, over 98 percent of all births occur in a hospital setting; a medical facility. Just under 2% of births occur at home with a midwife. Are we really going to allow birth to be fully owned and operated by medical practitioners and surgeons? We inherently have rights to choose who, where, and how we birth.

The United States ranks 34th in the world in infant mortality. Babies die in the hospital all the time. These numbers are unacceptable, yet persist despite the amount of dollars the U.S. spends on birth technology and interventions.
Midwives provide a choice in birth for families who want less medical intervention, and who want to preserve the spirit of birth.
The way we birth is a HUMAN RIGHTS issue and we must embrace it with compassion, love, and responsibility.

To learn more about Birth as a Human Rights Issue, please go to http://www.midwiferytoday.com/confer...anrightssummit

Your Midwives Need Your Support Now!

One midwife, arrested for MURDER, needs $15,000 NOW for bail.
The law under which she was arrested is http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions...PDF/H215v1.pdf
Your funds will be directly used to pay for the bail of our community midwife, and any additional funds will be used for attorney fees, and/or other midwives in a similar situation.
Where will it stop?

If we allow one midwife to be tried and convicted for murder, where will it stop?

Murder is the intentional loss of life; acting in order to destroy life.
Midwives, the keepers of the sacred in birth, are called to protect the rights of mothers and babies. Though babies die, midwives are not murderers.
Women and families are responsible for choosing their birth attendants and their place of birth.
If we allow our freedoms in birth to be taken away, what freedom is next?
Get Involved

Please send this campaign out to your communities, your families, and your midwives.
Please send thoughts and prayers to all midwives who are in service to families around the world.
Many, many blessings.

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http://www.wyff4.com/news/north-caro...n/-/index.html This article says the bail is $150,000. I hope that's an error.

It describes her as "Unlicensed". If midwifery isn't allowed in NC, can any of them be licensed? I'm confused.

I can see having them around under the guidance oa an LPN Licenced practicing Nurse with visual setting at the hospital, if there are none present, but with todays complications and new methods of invetro and other possible dangers, a parent won't take the death of the child at birth, in stride, but will demand that the medical community do everything to bring closure to the death. To be on the safe side, the midwives should network with clinicians that are on call or LPN that can be there and get help if the midwife doesn't detect a problem. The monitoring of heartbeats and stuff is detrimental to having a health child delivered during birth. A midwife cannot tell how long the child is suffering from lack of oxygen or organ failure. I will pray for a good outcome for your friend, however in the future, this method of practice may be needed to continue the midwifing process of natural childbirth at home. They still don't know enough about SIDs Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and therefore are super cautious.
To be 34th, is enough to give me pause with all the people who have biases and prejudice, i just can't trust human behavior these days. There are disturbed biased and prejudiced docs and nurses that are pulling plugs, and poisoning. Not saying that's your friend, but its a fact.

I will sign pass it along, but it's a hard call with the above continuing problems.

I for one would be very unhappy if we lose this right (natural home birth under the guidance of an experienced midwife). When I was about 19-20 years old I remember having heard so many things (mostly negative) about childbirth I was sure I would want to be completely knocked out for the experience. Then I read a book called Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. It completely changed my outlook. I too see birthing as a very spiritual experience that is much more than just physically giving birth. My first child was born in a hospital. He was 4 weeks early and my labor lasted a whopping 2 hours. I can’t even remember it, it was so fast. He ended up becoming very jaundiced and had to be hospitalized for a short time and put under lights. I remember how bewildering the whole experience was and how they even implied that my breast milk was contributing and how bad I felt about that. In 1980 there were very few women in our area that were breastfeeding their babies so I remember how I just had to learn to ignore other people’s learned prejudices in this area.

Then I became pregnant again a couple years later. Many reading this will probably think I took unnecessary risks and maybe they are right. I’m not even sure if I would do everything the same but you can’t go back and change things. Anyway I did find an excellent midwife with a tremendous amount of experience. And I gave birth at home to a healthy 5lb baby boy delivered in the breech position 5 ½ weeks early. A rough ride and bruised up for sure but he couldn’t have been watched over any more attentively. The labor lasted about 6-7 hours. He was so strong at birth he almost rolled himself over. He didn’t get so many blood draws that his feet were purple (like his brother at the hospital), in fact, he didn’t get any for several days. And, he never had a drop of formula. By this time, right or wrong, I wanted to be in charge of what goes on. My daughter was born 12 years later, 2 weeks early, almost 7 pounds and breech too. She was also delivered at home by an experienced licensed midwife.

Most women will still opt for a hospital birth so I don’t think the number of home births is ever going to be that great but I am tired of anyone telling us what we can and can’t do all the time. I had studied nutrition extensively and did many things to support a healthy pregnancy. I drank copious amounts of red raspberry leaf tea. I knew that although some things are genetic or otherwise cannot be prevented or anticipated, I felt very confident in my ability to handle myself and also incorporated a spiritual component that, to me, cannot be fully evaluated or appreciated by almost any mainstream doctor. But I also availed myself of the technology available at the time, ultra sounds etc, and regular doctor visits throughout the pregnancies. I definitely would not have traded the experience I did have with one that would have almost certainly involved a C-section in probably both breech births. I was fully alert and remember every moment. In fact, call me crazy, but I wouldn’t even describe the experiences I had as painful in the way that I interpret pain. And I would not have wanted that right to make that choice taken away from me. I can also say with a fair amount of certitude that I would not have placed blame on the midwife even if there had been complications. I was fully willing to accept that responsibility for myself. No, I think by far we have given away too much already (in the way of personal freedoms in the so-called name of safety).

I don’t have any money to contribute to really anything at the moment (robbing Peter to pay Paul lately) but if there is an address available I would think even writing letters of support etc could be of some positive value. I’m up for that.

In other countries women can choose to have home births more easily. They are monitored by trained midwives and usually have the ability to have a doctor present at the birth. Most home births are also registered at the local hospital for transfer if difficulties arise. Under these conditions home birth may be safe for most who would prefer to give birth at home.

However home birthing can never be as safe as hospital care. It may be more pleasant, more relaxing, more empowering , and more all sorts of things-- but when a woman starts bleeding, a baby gets stuck and or stops breathing- or any number of serious difficulties that can happen actually do happen then the hospital is the place to be. It is impossible to predict the outcome of a woman's labour-- it may be short or last for many hours-- usually quite safely, and indeed in most First World countries women are safe during childbirth due to the fact that immediate medical intervention is available to ensure that child and mother survive.

Try researching to discover the survival rate of mother and child in Third World countries where medical help is unavailable and untrained women deliver each others' children. It's horrifying.

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Posted by kudzy

Rowan Bailey is a Midwife in my extended community. She helped deliver my friends's beautiful child, four years ago. Rowan has been arrested on a charge of murder! I don't know any of the details. Here is a link to a donation page to help her raise bail. Please help her in any way you can. Thank you.

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From the Citizen Times of Asheville, North Carolina, USA

Money raised for woman charged in baby death

ASHEVILLE — Supporters of an Asheville woman facing murder charges in the death of an unborn child have raised thousands of dollars to help her make bail after the cause gained national attention.

More than 80 contributors from across the country have donated to the fund in amounts ranging from $5-$500 after the campaign was mentioned on the Progressive Parent blog radio broadcast Friday afternoon.

Police have charged Tina Louise Bailey, 44, with the murder of an unborn child, saying she mishandled a delivery after representing herself as a midwife under the name “Rowan.”

Bailey has no state certification as a midwife. She faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and remained jailed Friday. Bond was set at $150,000.

“A friend, teacher, mentor and fellow midwife, Rowan Bailey, as we know and love her,” the Indiegogo.com profile reads, “was arrested for murder in Asheville, NC. If we allow one midwife to be tried and convicted for murder, where will it stop?”

Bailey would need to post $15,000 to be released. The effort Friday evening had raised more than $3,300 in seven hours.

Indiegogo is an international crowd-funding platform, where small charities or grass-roots campaigns can raise money online.

“Pregnancy and birth are the most natural processes in the human experience,” the campaign profile states. “This process has been supported, facilitated and protected since the dawn of time by the midwife.”

Investigators found Bailey wrongly presented herself as a midwife and assisted with the birth over four days ending July 23, according to a consent judgment she signed with the N.C. Medical Board.

The mother was admitted to Mission Hospital that day, and the infant was delivered stillborn.

According to Bailey’s arrest warrant, the medical service she provided included catheterization and internal obstetrical exams, and she gave medical advice without proper training.

Police identified the cause of death as “acute chorioamnionitis and funistis and meconium aspiration,” which occurs when a newborn breathes in a mixture of amniotic and other fluids during delivery.

The Progressive Parent radio host Gena Kirby could not be reached. She extended her support for Bailey on the live show Friday, saying that “at least thousands of people” were “thinking of her and supporting her.”

Kirby’s summary of the show says Bailey “was taken because she assisted a mother in exercising her own human right to birth her baby where she chose.”

“This mother chose to birth her baby at home, and due to nobody's fault, this baby was lost in labor,” the website says.

The more conventional view of "The Skeptical OB" Dr. Amy Tuteur, an obstetrician gynecologist, but with some more details as well, can be found at Third 2012 homebirth death in North Carolina.

An article by Margaret Kirschner, a colleague of Rowan Bailey, explaining what they were doing: Asheville Women Take Birth into their own Hands

It seems her bond is set at $150,000, and she needs to post 10% of that, or $15,000, to get out on bail.

It seems (from here and here) that North Carolina only allows midwives who are nurses working under the supervision of a physician.

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Posted by Paul

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Posted by kudzy

Rowan Bailey is a Midwife in my extended community. She helped deliver my friends's beautiful child, four years ago. Rowan has been arrested on a charge of murder! I don't know any of the details. Here is a link to a donation page to help her raise bail. Please help her in any way you can. Thank you.

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From the Citizen Times of Asheville, North Carolina, USA

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A second article in the same paper, a day later, with more details, including this regarding the current midwife laws there: N.C. bill would allow more midwives:

In North Carolina, only certified nurse-midwives can legally deliver babies. Bailey was not a certified nurse-midwife or a certified professional midwife in the North American Registry of Midwives, officials say.

Nurse-midwives first must be registered nurses and then are required to get additional master’s level training before they can gain what’s known as “approval to practice.”