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A West-Coast Introduction

Amie Newman

You know, it’s not easy being a west coaster in a world of east coasters. I always feel like I’m late to the party. Life happens. News comes and goes. Catastrophic events occur, are reported on and seem to float away. And I’m just waking up and enjoying my first cup of coffee, ready to greet the day.

So it is with my first post as a guest blogger this week! Yes, I know. It’s 9:30pm on the east coast. But here in Seattle it’s a respectable 6:30pm and, as a mom, I’m really just getting to my non-child-related-activities-of-the-day (or evening. or night. as the case may be).

With that in mind, thanks for having my west-coast-late-to-the-party blogginess, Jill! And to all of you most fabulous Feministe readers, I’m thrilled to converse with y’all over the next week. I’m not very good at witty, interesting introductions so I’ll just go with the ole standard, if that’s okay?

I’m currently the Managing Editor at RH Reality Check, a publication covering global reproductive and sexual health and rights news. I’ve been an advocate for sexual and reproductive rights and health issues for a long time. I started my advocacy oh-so-many years ago, after graduating NYU and working in television and film. Ultimately moving out to Seattle, I started making short video documentaries, produced one on women & body image, worked for a handful of years at a feminist women’s health center as their communications & outreach director, while also engaging in my mama-activism through groups like Mothers Acting Up. My role as mama to my two children is by far my most activist, demanding, rewarding and engaging.

My activism, my writing, my passion revolves around creating unity amongst all of women’s reproductive and sexual health and rights. That is, whether we talk about safe abortion, access to contraception, choice in childbirth as it relates to midwifery/out-of-hospital birth/VBACs, newborn feeding choices, pregnant women’s rights (here’s a story I’m working on now), health care disparities on the basis of race/sexual identity/ethnicity/gender/age and more, we are talking about inequity and injustice that must be corrected.

Right now, I’m particularly obsessed with the push to ensure greater access to certified professional midwives and out-of-hospital birth – both of which have been shown to help reduce our nightmare maternal and newborn mortality rates in this country.

My other compulsion at the moment is related to a short video documentary I’m producing on breastfeeding & feminism. I’m just back from North Carolina where I shot my first interview with an incredible woman from the Carolina Breastfeeding Institute (thanks, Emily Taylor!)  about the ways in which our society must see breastfeeding as a public health imperative to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. We also discussed how clearly this is a feminist, reproductive rights issue. Stay tuned cause I have a feeling I’ll be yammering on about the societal changes that must take place in order to help new mothers with their newborn feeding journeys…

So, here I am in Seattle with my children, my husband, my two dogs, two toads and my three chickens, and so glad to share this week with everyone here!

9 thoughts on A West-Coast Introduction

  1. I look forward to hearing more about alternatives to the hospital OBGYN centered way of birth. I hope you get to write about it and could mention different sources of information out there. (Most imformation seems fairly biased in both directions). All I would comment on the debate is that I do believe that all costs should be covered for pregnancy and childbirth (and everything else), I do dislike the recent concentration that at home childbirth may be cheaper and that she considered when making a decision. (No woman should have to calculate the costs of either model)

  2. Pleased to meet you, Amie! I absolutely love RH Reality Check. Looking forward to your guest posts here. I’m especially interested in hearing more about the “health care disparities on the basis of race/sexual identity/ethnicity/gender/age,” and about CPMs and out-of-hospital births. Will you be including doulas in your discussion?

  3. Mikeymikemike – I absolutely agree – all costs, no matter what kind of birth a woman has or where she births, should be covered! I think the conversation around out-of-hospital childbirth from organizations that are working for federal regulation of certified professional midwives, thus expanding access to out-of-hospital birth options, focuses in part on economics because it is part of the larger conversation around health care reform and access. That is, if CPMs are federally regulated, de-criminalized, and are able to be covered as Medicaid providers we’d be reducing the costs associated with hospital births from unnecessary medical interventions and unnecessary c-sections. Homebirth is only “cheaper” in the sense that if all women with low-risk pregnancies had access the evidence shows that there would be a tremendous reduction in unnecessary medical interventions and maternal and newborn health outcomes would improve, saving costs as well.

    Dawn, great to meet you too! Glad you enjoy RH Reality Check. I am on the road towards gaining my Post Partum Doula certification and believe that doulas are tremendously significant to this discussion. Are you a doula? I do think, though, that for so many women doula assistance during or after childbirth is not financially feasible just yet and that now is the time for us to lay the groundwork and advocate strongly for the importance of this kind of support for all women. As for health care disparities, one that particularly plagues me is the fact that African American women are nearly four times as likely to die during childbirth as white women – in the United States! Now! It’s criminal, really.

    So, yes. Let me know your thoughts because I’d love to have a continuing conversation! Thanks for the welcome!

  4. Hey, out of curiousity, in your documentary on breastfeeding are you planning to discuss women who cannot naturally or safely breastfeed? In terms of societal implications, I’m thinking mostly from an economics/practicality-oriented point of view, but also a little bit about social stigmatization of women who can’t breastfeed.

    I’m really intrigued by your mention of a connection between breastfeeding and *mortality* rate, as most of the studies I have seen (disclaimer: my sources are very male-oriented) deal with later health implications. It would be awesome if you could discuss that.

    And now I’m probably jumping ahead eight or nine posts, so sorry ’bout that, but this is something I’ve been wondering about for awhile and you seem to be the first person who might actually have an idea. In terms of home versus hospital birth, have you found religion/spirituality to be a factor in the decision? Either the particular set of beliefs or the strength with which the woman believes?

  6. Willow, thanks so much for your fantastic comment. I will respond in greater detail later but, as a mom who both breast and bottlefed and who has very strong feelings about supporting women no matter how they feed their babies, I not only plan on discussing in the video, I am working on another project that addresses this. I also wrote about this not too long ago: Breast, Bottle and The Beauty of Motherhood. My first interviewee for the video said something quite interesting to me. She relayed that she hated hearing breast and bottlefeeding framed as “choices” women make as if it’s choice b/w vanilla or chocolate ice cream when, in reality, there are SO MANY forces at work that allow for a women to feed her baby one way or the other. She went into more detail, of course, but the gist is that this is a societal issue not just a simple choice issue.

    As for breastfeeding and women’s health, here are a couple of links to start out with:

    http://www.rcm.org.uk/midwives/features/breastfeeding-saves-motherslives/

    http://www.med.unc.edu/www/news/2009-news-archives/april/breastfeeding-has-twice-the-benefit-of-bottle-feeding-unc-research-shows

    I may have been a bit quick to write that breastfeeding reduces maternal & newborn mortality without more context. I can go into more detail but you are absolutely correct that it has benefits longer term. Finally, as for religion/spirituality, I think I’ll need to address that at a later date but it’s a fascinating idea, though I tend to think it’s less about spirituality or religion and more about a combination of factors that may include personal faith but also so much more.

    Paige – yay! Great to “see” you too, mama. Love to hear your thoughts on this discussion as well…

  9. I am thrilled to see a voice presented for out-of-hospital and reduced-intervention birth, and for the complex issues surrounding breastfeeding in our culture. Both are issues I am very passionate about. It is vitally important that these discussions are brought to the forefront of feminism as we work towards providing more choice and better outcomes for mothers and babies.

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