Midwife Arrested in Indiana, released on $10,000 Bail (via Jennifer Margulis)
I recently saw this story on a Facebook post that a friend of mine shared earlier today, and I just had to say something more about it than I have over at Facebook. This is one of the dumbest stories I have ever seen in my life, a woman arrested for actually being a midwife, but in the State of Indiana, where there are counties with large Amish populations, this practice is illegal.
Ireena Kesslar, a midwife who seems to take pride in what she does for other women in her own community and also outside the state in Michigan, was arrested on Saturday morning after being accused of being a midwife. This is against state law in Indiana, and I guess the state of Indiana has very little to do these days so they went after this woman and also someone else who was arrested prior to Ms. Kesslar. The state seems to be making sure they keep on top of this growing trend where women choose to have their babies at home with a mid-wife and not in a hospital because of the cost, but of course the states argument as well as the doctors argument is that it might not be as safe for the women outside of the hospital setting.
This is not an argument I agree with, and if a woman wanted to have her baby, delivered by a midwife outside of a hospital setting, then I say it should be perfectly fine for that to happen. We have to remember this is nothing new. This is not a practice started last week by a woman who thought she could make some money by being cheaper than a doctor because she has nursing experience. This is not the way it is at all, and the history of childbirth shows that before we had hospitals in every city there were midwifes in every community who did practices just like this. When women were in the wagon trains going across the nation looking for a better life do you think there were hospitals along the way that told them that they had to stop there to have a baby because it was illegal to bring that midwife along with you to deliver the baby? Of course there was not, and even with those practices women delivered healthy and vibrant baby boys and girls who went on to populate the nation. To try and tell me this is dangerous is a crock, and I am not buying the state’s argument.
To top it all off, after Ms. Kesslar was arrested and taken to jail, she was given jail clothes that do not fit and cut off the circulation in her legs, causing her leg to swell. She is also a diabetic, which the jail did not care about and gave her food that would be dangerous for a diabetic to eat. She tried to plead with those working there but to no avail, and it seems like the jail was just as uncaring as the state was when the made the initial arrest on this poor woman. I suggest you hit the link at the top of this blog and go read the full story for yourself, because it gives a lot more facts about what goes on with midwives in Indiana and the growing number of people looking to go in that direction.
I believe she has a case here, at the very least for being treated unfairly during her arrest and her jailing. If she would have become ill because she was not given the proper food or even her medicine (which was also withheld) the jail could have been held liable for that in court. I do not see the underlying problem of not giving her the meds in the first place not being the same thing. I do not think she would have had to suffer a traumatic event just to have cause against the jail, and I hope that her attorneys not only fight this charge but also fight the way she was treated in the jail she was taken to.
We now live in a nation where the states fight the federal government for power over our lives, and we seem to be the only ones that lose out in the end. Before long the Congress of the United States will pass a law against midwives and say it is because it affects interstate commerce in some way. The battle continues for the rights of the people against the rights of the state and the feds, and that fight will probably never end. As I look at this situation I wonder how the state of Indiana, a state I once called home for a short time, could explain this way. It seems to me the doctors got together and fought for this, and this has very little to do with the health of the woman. This seems to have very much to do with the money that is involved. It costs a lot of money to go into a hospital setting and have a baby, and if more people move to midwives then that would be cutting into the doctors money they can make off of these women.
I am also stunned that the woman’s groups are not up in arms about this. Remember, those are the groups that go protest everywhere that tell us that a woman has a right to choose. I guess that only means the woman has the right to choose if she wants the baby or not, but not where she will actually have the child.
Again, I suggest you go read Ms. Margulis’s article and judge for yourself what you think about this law.
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