The Silent Mother

Esoteric & Historical Gravidity & Parturition

A Dead Woman, Pronatalism, and the Enlightenment

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Yesterday, I had a conversation with my 16 year old daughter about college. I told her in no uncertain terms, that she should not apply for colleges in states with abortion bans and that the minute she thinks about sex with a boy, we should get her on birth control. She agreed, without any argument. My daughter should not have to limit herself because of fear, or because of laws that might harm or kill her, yet here we are.

The latest story out of Georgia, about Adriana Smith, who has been brain dead and kept on life support to be used as an incubator for a baby that may not be compatible with life, since the pregnancy was 9 weeks along, has shaken American women, myself and my daughter included, to the core. Ms. Smith had provided no consent for her body to be kept alive like this. Her family, her legal decision makers, do not consent to having her body used like this. Nor do they consent to burying a baby that didn’t need to suffer or consent to the astronomical medical bills. Informed consent and bodily autonomy are central to medical ethics. What the state of Georgia is doing is not only unethical, it is amoral, and cruel.

Ms. Smith’s story is straight out of Brave New World‘s hatchery, and it’s author, Aldous Huxley, was a lifelong eugenicist. Viewing or using women as “breeders” is pronatalism. Pronatalism, or natalism, is the belief that making more babies, typically of a specific kind, to increase the population is not only good, but a necessity. The online dictionaries and encyclopedias vary in their definitions. Some of them include anti-immigrant references, others touch on legal, or political references. Some places attempt to spin the definition into something positive including supports for families, daycare, financial incentives, etc. We can have additional social supports without pronatalism or pronatalist laws or policies.

What these definitions lack is historical context. That context includes the eugenics inherent in the term itself. The most directly relevant historical period is the interwar period in both Europe and the US. Which, as it happens, is when Brave New World was published. Before we get to that, we need to roll the clock back a bit further. The roots of eugenics, or proto-eugenics, began during the Enlightenment period, the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when there was little differentiation between science and philosophy. I’ll leave this as a teaser for the next post. Suffice it to say, what is happening now, to Adriana Smith, is part of a long thread anchored in history, but which runs through our modern laws, policies, and beliefs about women, pregnancy, and ethics.

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Where do we go from here? Implications for modern childbirth education. Part 12

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The interconnectedness of faith and medicine, as illustrated with the case of Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, offers us a new perspective when tackling ethical issues where faith and medicine seems to collide. When physicians can have the understanding that patients can, consciously or otherwise, regard them in a parallel status to that of a priest, with their words and suggestions as gospel truth on their health and well being, it may help physicians to communicate with patients in a new way that is more conducive to collaborative care.

By Edwardx – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38918671

This knowledge can also help medical providers better reach patients with dogmatic beliefs against standard of care treatments, such as childhood vaccinations or other arenas where patients values and beliefs may lead them to cause harm to self or to others.

Yet, I caution about this because there are other areas in medicine where doctor knows best, does not apply. The case of a physician refusing to offer birth control or abortion rises to the top of my list of where physician beliefs and faith in their own rightness can interfere negatively with patient care.

More broadly, this pushes out into politics and legislation. When issues like this are seen as an “either / or”, rather than an “and”, then one side is “right”, rather than having a deeper understanding of the nuance and complexity of the issues. When an issue is seen as two boxers in a ring, one will always need to come out as a clear winner. Rather, when, as suggested by Levin, Vanderpool, Mann and Messikomer, we see the integration of faith and medicine, faith can become a powerful tool to motives patients to act.

If the broader avenues of scholarship, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, law, public health, medicine, etc. can widen their perspectives and work in an interdisciplinary manner, then, I propose, we may see a new paradigm for research in the field.

After doing this research, I am left with more questions that I am as of yet, unable to answer. As a childbirth educator and doula, I see my own teachings reflected back in Read’s words and method, and yet, I am dismayed and left wondering, knowing the history of eugenics, the desire to control women’s bodies and their childbearing ability and the foundations of modern childbirth education in this concept of the noble savage and the overcivilized woman, how can we childbirth educators teach in good conscience?

Are the positive outcomes regarding happy parents and satisfied consumers of our classes, enough to keep teaching as we do?

To use a colloquial term, now that we are “woke” because the evidence shows the roots of Read’s method to be buried in the idea of white racial superiority and the continuation of the race, how do we move forward?

Knowing that Read was, in effect, an anti-science doctor, how do we still teach his techniques and theory?

Are the results worth the little lie we tell ourselves and our students? Is it a little lie after all or is faith alone what women need to preserver through a potentially long and painful experience?

Is is that faith in themselves, in the work they did to prepare for birth and faith in their medical providers enough?

Is childbirth education effective not because of what we teach, but because of how we teach it?

Fundamentally, Read’s encouragement and direct support of women, whether at the bedside or through his book, gave women the faith they needed to shirk unnecessary medical interventions and have births that were predominantly physiologically normal, with limited medical interventions. The seeds he planted and germinated grew to be an international movement promoting natural childbirth which still thrives today, though with the same controversies as when it originated.

Fin.

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Rethinking Faith vs. Medicine to become, Faith and Medicine, Part 10

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At first glance, faith and medicine seem to be two separate spheres. However, when, as suggested by Levin, Vanderpool, Mann and Messikomer, when there is the integration of faith and medicine, faith can become a powerful tool that motivates patients to act and for physicians to practice better medicine. Natural Childbirth, as created by Read and cultivated by pregnant mothers since, is a movement rooted in both faith and medicine, as inseparable as sperm and egg once joined to create a new human. The line between one and the other blurs to create a new being, which is to be defined on its own terms, not by that of an outsider who only uses the one familiar perspective.

Read’s critics, using their singular perspective as medical doctors, claimed that because of his lack of scientific evidence and his reliance on “his own eyes” that his method lacked credibility and validity. Yet, the testimony of the mothers who used his method tells us otherwise. Read’s preacher-like storytelling engaged his readers and listeners such that he created a fervent set of believers. Childbirth without Fear, still in publication seventy-six years later, illustrates the strength of Read’s teachings and the faith people have in him and his method.

It is the combination of both Read the self-proclaimed prophet and Read the method that created his success. When we look to the models of clergyman and physician, we not only see the corresponding personal callings, but we also see distinct expressions of faith in both fields. It is these parallels and similarities, rather than the superficial differences in outlook on specific topics within medicine that scholarship could be applied.

Read viewed pregnancy and birth as a fulfillment of a woman’s highest calling and that far from being pathological and something to be feared, birth can be pain free through proper preparation with adherence to Read’s method. Read believes that birth is normal and that it is a woman’s God given duty to produce children and raise them. By doing so, she is introducing and creating “motherlove”, which in turn will save the world.

Read, as the preacher of his gospel, views himself as a savior of women and of all mankind. Women have found faith in Read and his method for generations. It is through this faith that they can have births that create feelings of empowerment and strength as opposed to fear and weakness. Although Read’s prophecy of saving the world through “motherlove” did not come to fruition, his prophetic insights in to childbirth education, relaxation techniques and labor support from fathers have endured.

Next Up: Where do we go from here? Implications for modern childbirth education.

Bibliography, Deena Blumenfeld, The Silent Mother, Dr. Grantly Dick-ReadDownload
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