With Woman: A Call to Tennessee Midwives
It is Passover: a holiday I never fully understood growing up as a cafeteria Catholic in the Southwest. I have since come to appreciate the festival, when Jews commemorate the exodus from Egypt, as a celebration of resistance and resilience.
If you don’t know the story, it begins with an act of defiance by midwives who disobeyed the law to fulfill a higher moral obligation.
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
Ordered to carry out an unjust and immoral decree, Shiphrah and Puah recognize their obligation is to the Hebrew women, their babies, and their God. Resistance to legal authority was a righteous act that ensured the survival of the Hebrew babies.
The spirit of resistance is one that has permeated midwifery throughout history. Midwives were healers and keepers of wellness for women and families in virtually every place in time until very recently, even (perhaps especially) in times of persecution and oppression. As we who strive for birth justice are often reminded, the term “midwife” is derived from the Middle English midwyf, or “with woman.” The midwives burned as witches in the American colonies, grand midwives descended from enslaved Africans in the US south, parteras in the borderlands, Indigenous midwives, and the midwives who to this day serve women left behind by medical institutions – all have been called and recognize that their obligation is with women, even when the law is against women.
Right now, the law in Tennessee is turning against women. The General Assembly has approved SB 1391, a bill that would turn pregnant women and new mothers into criminals. It takes a law that was supposed to protect pregnant women from violence and treats them like assailants. It would permit prosecutors to charge women with assault for losing pregnancies or babies, or giving birth to babies with health problems at birth.
The targets of the law are women who are in the most need of support: women who struggle with narcotic addiction during pregnancy. The State of Tennessee is in search of a solution for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome and the prosecutors have offered … criminal prosecution. They call it a “velvet hammer”; when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. They claim that the law is just a way to use misdemeanor charges to get women in treatment. But if anybody understands the devastating power prosecutors have over people's lives, it's midwives, who in many places face murder charges for losses that would be considered an unpreventable misfortune for other professionals.
Tennessee lawmakers seem to believe that they can keep babies healthy by punishing their mothers. They obviously haven’t been listening to midwives! Because midwives know that mamas and babies do best when pregnant women are treated with care, and when babies are kept close to their mothers after birth. Even women who struggle with addiction love their babies, and can have healthy pregnancies if they can form trusting relationships with their maternity care providers.
An alternative reading of the story of Shiphrah and Puah illustrates the danger of this law. What if the story isn’t about the midwives’ resistance, but about the Hebrew women’s fear? If Shiphrah and Puah were telling the truth, and the women – knowing the Pharoah’s decree – were avoiding calling the midwives until after they had given birth? This is exactly why midwifery organizations have stood against the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes: if women fear arrest and separation from the children they have and the baby they will birth, they will avoid care. Criminalization creates an atmosphere of distrust that is destructive to health and to the bond between mother and baby.
Despite the best efforts of activists concerned with the health of pregnant women and their babies, this law has passed the General Assembly and is headed to Governor Haslam to be signed into law.
Advocates are circulating a petition, which you should sign, and call the office of the Governor to let him know that he should veto SB 1391 because it is dangerous to mothers and babies and destructive to families. But the calling to be with women is a calling to go a step further, and awaken the spirit of resistance.
The proponents of the bill have insisted that, because there is no reporting requirement in the statute, health care providers will not be required to turn their patients over to law enforcement. Let the Governor know that you will not abandon your patients to the police.
This is a legal form of defiance of an unjust law in service of a higher moral obligation. Your patients who have been pushed to the margins – women of color, the poor, rural women – are in need of your help. From the Underground Railroad to the New Sanctuary Movement, good people have placed themselves between bad laws and people in need. Now is a time for this type of resistance.
There is strength in numbers. This is an opportunity for midwives serving women in all settings to come together, and to form alliances with other health care providers to declare their institutions as safe harbors for women who struggle with addiction. Imagine the powerful message it would send if hospitals sent letters to the Governor and their local prosecutor saying that they will not assist law enforcement in carrying out these laws. Imagine what we could accomplish if every midwife wielded the strength of Shiphrah and Puah on behalf of Tennessee women and babies.
