Irin Carmon

But how do they go in and get that doctor's appointment if they don't have insurance?

So there are enormous barriers to even receiving the kind of care that might prevent the maternal mortality and morbidity rates from being so high.

He was drummed out of his hometown because he was a very bad doctor, who stumbled upon the cases of some young women.

They were enslaved women with obstetric fistula, meaning that they had damage from giving birth.

And the plantation owners who enslaved them were very interested in them being able to give birth again to provide more forced labor.

And J. Marion Sims was given the opportunity to experiment upon them with no anesthesia, with great pain for years.

And this was the birth of modern gynecology, was the suffering of countless women, three of whose names we know, Anarka, Betsy, and Lucy.

And they were the mothers of gynecology.

He was part of a process of forcing out the traditional midwives who had been attending birth and also helping women end their pregnancies through what means they had at the time.

When white male American doctors took over reproductive health care and promised that it would be cleaner, more respectable, more painless, for their own profit and control, we enshrined that hierarchy into the practice of medicine.

Maggie's from Canada.

And at first, she did not understand the American health care system.

And the more she learned about it, the more horrified she was.

She wanted to have a health care practitioner who treated her like a human being.

And it was not happening at the hospitals that she went to.

So they drove pretty far from their house to Brooklyn Birth Center, which has midwifery care.

But when Maggie went into labor after about two or three days of stalled labor, it became clear that this baby was not coming out.

And they transferred her to Woodhull Hospital.

It was determined that Maggie needed a C-section.

And after the birth, her husband noticed her looking faint, not being herself.