The following is a brief excerpt from an essay about World Healing Traditions from my documentary book Women Healers of the World:

Midwifery Healing Traditions

The practice of delivering babies has been a controversial profession for centuries, earning the attention of lay-practitioners, midwives, physicians, attorneys, and governments.

In 1716, long before America earned its independence, New York City required its midwives to be licensed. For the next century and a half, women enjoyed the role of primary caregiver during childbirth with little intervention from men or doctors. But in 1888, male physicians determined midwifery could be a lucrative practice: there was money to be made in the delivery of infants. They argued that obstetrics and gynecology should be removed from women (whether licensed or not), and they formed the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) as the first formal opposition to the right of midwives to perform birth services.

Male doctors quickly introduced controversial surgeries and drugs to what was formerly a natural event. In 1847 Dr. James Young Simpson of Edinburgh used chloroform for the first time to ease a woman’s pain during delivery (a compassionate act, but he was condemned by doctors and ministers for “interfering with God’s will.”) Equally controversial interventions such as the Cesarean section, the use of forceps, electronic fetal monitoring, and the epidural would follow.

Midwifery Today

in 1960 a full 97% of births were hospital births, and America was introduced to the birth control pill and continuous electronic fetal monitoring (EFM). Nearly twenty years later, in 1979 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revealed behavior and motor handicaps in children whose mothers had received Demerol, a previously popular narcotic pain reliever used during labor. This prompted the conservative ACNM to change its negative policy to support "alternative" and homebirth services, a surprise move that opened the door for the establishment of the Midwives Alliance of North America, though the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) still vehemently opposed nurse-midwifery, insisting midwives should be subordinate to doctors and payment should be physician-directed.

To read more about this and16 other incredible world healing and health traditions, see the book Women Healers of the World, available here, now celebrating its 10-year publication anniversary.