August 14, 2003

Pioneering midwifery service closes in Chicago

An email arrived to day with sad news for midwives in the US. The message came from Norma Swenson, from the Harvard School of Public Health and it has been sent to various childbirth activists around the world. Here is the main text of the message:

“It is with a heavy heart that we inform our midwifery colleagues that the University of Chicago has decided to eliminate the Nurse Midwifery Practice.
Established in 1985 we have been the only private CNM practice on the South side of Chicago. The current philosophy of The University of Chicago, is to make OB/Gyne a state of the art high risk facility, with focus on filling the new Comer Children's hospital NICU (promising 1000 more babies/year for the NICU).
It appears there is no place for women to choose normal birth or to utilize the services of a CNM. We have consistently been cited for high patient satisfaction and optimal outcomes. But as we have been told this is not about patient satisfaction and choice, but all about money and power. We put together a plan with 4 different options that we felt would allow us to be fiscally responsible and continue our practice. All options were declined by Dr. Haney, the new Chair of OB/Gyne at U of C. His letter to the faculty today blamed the malpractice rates (departmental increase of 100%) as his reason for terminating our practice.”

The midwives have co-ordinated a campaign as best they can within the hospital system and they have had a lot of local support. If any of you would also like to register your concern with this loss of freedom of choice in Chicago, you can email the midwifery team at:

midwives@babies.bsd.uchicago.edu

The struggle to establish and maintain midwifery services is a world wide effort. We always think that our local conditions are less than ideal and are far from perfect, yet somewhere in the world there are always women worse off than we are, both having babies and working as midwives. As I said in an earlier posting on the state of birth in the USA - there are not many examples in that country that we would want to be emulating!

Posted by andrea at August 14, 2003 06:03 PM

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