WEBVTT - Bedside Manners 12: The Beginning 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:08.640 Heinrich was having a bad time. For two years, he 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:12.120 had been an inquisitor in southern Germany and was involved 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:15.120 in the witch trials that had begun to sweep western Europe. 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:17.840 But Heinrich ended up not being a good fit for 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.720 his role. Although he had a profound sense of duty, 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:24.279 he lacked any sense of professionalism. For one thing, he 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.440 had become deeply obsessed with the sex life of one 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:30.080 of the women he accused and brought to trial. It 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:34.160 was all too much, and his unhinged displays were deeply embarrassing. 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.040 Because of this, the bishop, his boss, set free every 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.960 last woman on trial that day, fired Heinrich and publicly 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.479 declared him to be insane. Heinrich, who had been looking 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:49.880 forward to making a name for himself, was mortified, inconsolable. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:52.960 Even The next course of action, it was decided, would 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:55.480 be to put his truths down on paper. He would 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.840 write a book. The year was fourteen eighty six, and 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.880 it would be a clap that would echo for centuries 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:04.880 to come. Heinrich took to his study and got out 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.920 his ink his order of business created a guidebook that 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.560 would help solve for this world that he felt was 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.720 perverted by women. He wrote hundreds of pages on how 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:17.000 to spot treacherous ones, on how women often caroused with 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.240 the devil, on how they practiced witchcraft and were generally 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.319 up to evil doings. It acted as a guide for 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:29.120 identifying witches and suggested different kinds of torture, prosecution strategies, 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.480 and punishments for those convicted of the charges outlined in 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.280 its pages. The ones he cautioned his readers to fear 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.959 the most, he wrote, were the concubines, domineering spouses, and midwives. 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:43.120 The latter, he wrote, was the worst of the worst. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.600 Heinrich wrote that midwives not only killed babies at birth, 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:50.000 but hungered to drink their blood. He claimed that midwives 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.880 were in the business of actively recruiting young women to 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.720 join their ranks, and had the best luck with ones 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.160 who were already morally corrupt by signing over their souls 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:02.480 to the devil, giving over the souls of the babies 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.360 in their charge. He believed that Europe was under spiritual siege, 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.639 and if only people knew the satanic midwives could be stopped. 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.600 It was a madman's treatise with an academic flourish, and 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:18.040 Heinrich Cramer wanted to get his writings into as many 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:21.520 hands as possible. The advent of the printing press indeed 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:25.600 allowed this to happen, spreading copies of his Malleus Maleficarum 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.639 far and wide. The book was condemned by top theologians 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.560 and decried by the Catholic Church. They saw these accusations 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:40.120 as reprehensible and suggestions of torture to illicit confession as unethical. Midwives, 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.040 after all, were often the local healers. They were in 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.600 the business of helping people get well, birthing babies, and 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.560 even legally allowed to care for their spiritual wellbeing through baptism. 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.200 But still the book gained momentum in the secular courts 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:56.920 and with lay people who could afford to purchase it. 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.240 By sixteen oh four, King James the First declared that 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.560 he would rather his child was baptized by an ape 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:07.680 as by a woman, repeating Heinrich's idea that midwives were 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.240 in the business of trickery and soul stealing. But to 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:13.760 some it was clear that it wasn't the souls of 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:17.640 a nation that were under attack, but rather the midwives themselves, 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:24.200 the very people who tended to their survival I'm Aaron Manke, 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:36.560 and welcome to bedside manners. Giving birth is an incredible feat. 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.160 Of course, I haven't done it myself, but I hear 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.480 that words sometimes fall short in describing how profound of 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.080 an experience it truly is. And for as long as 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.200 women have been giving birth, midwives have been present. The 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:52.760 word quite literally means with women. Written and oral traditions 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:56.880 across ancient cultures affirm the importance of midwives in their societies. 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:00.400 In ancient Rome and Greece, the formally educated midas wives 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.680 were held in such high esteem that the writings were 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.080 often cited by male physicians. We see reverence for them 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.920 in Egyptian carvings. Communities have long looked to their midwives, 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:12.800 who were often versed in all matters of life and death. 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:15.760 They worked in the homes of expectant mothers or made 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:18.360 private spaces for them to come give birth. To be 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:21.520 a midwife was in honor. It was long a position 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:25.839 of power, respect and expertise. So it was a curious 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:30.440 moment when in sixteen fifty eight English physician Perceval Willoughby 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.560 sheepishly crawled on his hands and knees into the birthing 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.600 room of an expectant mother. Had the laboring patient been 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.600 made aware of his arrival, she probably would have been horrified. 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:43.279 Having a man in the birthing chamber was considered indecent. 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:47.200 Perceval's own daughter, a midwife, had asked him to advise 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.159 on what she believed to be a particularly difficult case 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.920 of a baby in the breach position. The record tells 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:56.040 us that he merely took a quick look, supposedly unnoticed, 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:59.919 and slunk away. Perceval gave his thoughts on the baby's position, 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:02.680 but he was wrong. How could he have known about 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.359 what the baby was doing by simply looking from across 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.440 the room. But still his advice was sought. Perceval's story 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.640 was emblematic of the moment you see beyond that birthing room, 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:16.120 something strange was happening. Although midwiffery had long been the 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:18.800 domain of women, men were beginning to encroach in what 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:22.599 amounted to a business opportunity. Women had the market cornered, 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:24.840 and they saw that there was money to be made. 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:27.880 Perceval and his medical school cronies got into the business 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.200 of publishing midwiffery manuals. They were going to great lengths 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.800 to assert their authority over the long standing female domain, 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.279 even though this particular striving was far out of step 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:42.080 with the social norms. Then, in sixteen seventy one a 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:46.359 response came. A woman named Jane Sharp published The Midwives Book, 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:49.920 or the Whole Art of Midwiffery Discovered in England. At 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:54.039 almost one hundred thousand words long, the book was revolutionary. 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:59.480 Jane's book documented actual practice, anecdotes and observations of birth, 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:04.200 wrote expertly about anatomy and sex, conception and disease, and 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:08.040 pregnancy and delivery. What made this text so novel was 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.039 that it was written in plain language for everyone. You 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.640 didn't have to have a medical degree to understand it. 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:18.200 Her voice was authoritative and her stance was confident. For millennia, 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:20.920 women's knowledge of bodies and how to care for them 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:24.279 had been passed down orally kept in diaries or shared 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.080 in letters, but never had such a grand treatise been 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:30.120 made so widely available. It was an answer to all 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:33.200 of the men who were writing and selling midwifery books 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.520 without having ever delivered a baby. In the pages of 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:39.279 her book, she asserted the rights of herself and other 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.279 women to continue doing birth work. It's possible that she 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:45.480 sensed what was coming for midwives and edging out by 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.960 the medical establishment. She wasn't going down without a fight, though, 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:51.520 so she set out to prove that the pen was 0:06:51.560 --> 0:07:01.440 indeed just as mighty as the sword. Two centuries later, 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.039 and across the world, in America's Ozark Mountains, a granny 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.560 woman caught a baby. This wasn't her first and surely 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.000 wouldn't be her last. Laboring women always called upon her 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:14.400 when their birthing time drew near. She was a mother 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.760 many times over, and a grandmother too. She was an 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.040 auntie beloved by her neighbors, young and old, and knew 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:25.040 everyone and everything that lived within her community. From her 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.520 gardens and woods, she gathered native plants, knowing that through 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:30.920 the alchemy of heat and time, she could turn them 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.480 into soothing potions. She loved the sap from sweetgum trees 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:38.239 and the leaves of yellow dock for teas. She learned 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.160 these things from her mother and from her grandmother. Carrying 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:44.920 on a long vocation of community care, our granny Woman 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.560 and her sisters all carried with them the midwifing traditions 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:53.160 of their enslaved ancestors. During America's enslavement of African people, 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.840 The granny woman held a special place in plantation society. 0:07:57.080 --> 0:07:59.880 From the perspective of her captors, it was her job 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:02.840 to keep her fellow slaves healthy and to ensure their 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.560 fertility in order to make more enslaved bodies for her 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.800 fellow captives. She was there to protect them with her 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.360 deep held knowledge of both plant medicine and the female body. 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:16.720 The reputation of such women was held in high esteem 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:19.480 in this social order, which allowed her to occupy a 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:22.680 unique liminal space. She might be sought out for medical 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:25.640 care from her white owners, or be allowed to travel 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:28.760 to a birth on a neighboring plantation. She might attend 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.280 to blackbirths as well as white ones. With the Emancipation 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.400 Proclamation of eighteen sixty three, the formerly enslaved population did 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:39.240 what they could to establish themselves in a hostile land. 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.560 These black midwives entered into the free market, free to 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.520 practice how and on who they chose. Midwives worked across 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.680 the country and importantly held down their posts in poor 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.640 and rural areas. They provided crucial gaps in community care. 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:57.280 White physicians, many who had recently come back from training 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:01.440 at European medical schools felt threatened by these midwives. As 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.760 medicine began to gel into a professional class, those in 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.720 power had a lot of interest in gatekeeping. These newly 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:11.800 minted physicians had their economic security to protect. By the 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:15.520 early twentieth century, the schools would begin to teach obstetrics, 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.120 which finds its roots in the modern Latin word which 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.920 means quite literally midwife. Perhaps they found this term to 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:26.000 be more academic. In doing so, they were intentionally distancing 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:30.319 themselves from the more informal, long women held tradition of delivery. 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:32.880 It was an attempt to edge out women from their 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:35.960 profession and gain more of the market share that was 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:40.600 women's bodies. But in nineteen ten, a landmark publication arrived. 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.360 The Flexner Report was a study of American medical education. 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.760 The report revealed a high maternal mortality rate. It situated 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:52.559 midwifery firmly in its crosshairs and recommended that birth should 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:56.440 be treated as a medical event, so hospitalizing every mother 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.240 and abolishing midwiffery. This would create a steady streat of 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:03.640 revenue for new hospitals. At this point, about half of 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.520 the births in America were attended to by physicians and 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.199 the other half by midwives. The following year, an obstetric's 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.040 professor in New York was quoted in saying that midwives 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:18.559 are and I quote dark, dirty, ignorant, untrained, incompetent women. 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:22.959 Evil though necessary, evil that must be controlled. We must 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.560 save our women. By nineteen fifteen, doctor Joseph de Ley, 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:30.000 the most famous obstetrician of the day, suggested that birth 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.720 be viewed as a dangerous pathological process that must be 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:36.760 controlled to the highest degree. He believed that every woman 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.640 in labor needed medical intervention, even when the intervention itself 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.840 left long lasting damage to the mother and child. He 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:48.679 invited the use of forceps, restraints, episiotomies, and drug cocktails 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:53.000 to knock laboring mothers unconscious. He stripped humanity from childbirth, 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:56.520 and to many it seemed that modernity had finally arrived. 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:00.560 By nineteen seventeen, a national debate and dias desire for 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.960 governmental response had been triggered. They needed to do something 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:08.120 about the American midwife problem. In nineteen twenty one, the 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.360 Shepherd Tuner Act was passed by Congress, which provided federal 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.960 funding for maternity and childcare. The states were required to 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.000 match these federal dollars, but without necessary health care infrastructure, 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:23.120 many rural places heartily welcomed midwiffree to fill in the gaps. 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:27.280 States worked towards regulating their practices in the meantime, requiring 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:30.520 training and licenses in order for them to legally work, 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.360 but none of this made birth safer. In fact, until 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:36.840 the invention of antibiotics in nineteen twenty eight, maternal and 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.720 infant hospital deaths kept rising, as did the incidents of 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:44.320 death from birth injuries. America saw a forty one percent 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:48.560 increase in infant mortality due to injury between nineteen fifteen 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:53.800 and nineteen twenty nine, primarily due to invasive obstetrical interference. 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.400 By nineteen thirty five, less than fifteen percent of American 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:02.200 births were attended by midwives. Practitioners were working in the poor, 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.480 black and rural South, a place where many white doctors 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:08.280 chose not to go. But it was also around this 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:12.400 time in rural Alabama that a very special baby was born. 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.160 Annie Lee Logan came into the world as the fourteenth 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.360 child of Martha and Lenn Rodgers. She was born around 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:29.000 nineteen ten near the community of Sweetwater. Her family's land 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:32.120 was beautiful as the name suggested. Her parents owned it, 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:34.600 and even though they were cash poor, they lived in 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:38.680 abundance among their fruit orchards, rice fields, and vegetable gardens. 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:42.240 As Annie got older, she began to experience fainting spells. 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:45.480 These kept her from working her family's fields and gardens, 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.280 but they gave her access to another world. She went 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.440 off with her mother to deliver local babies. Annie was 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.360 curious about everything that she saw and cared for her 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.040 baby dolls just as well as her mother cared for 0:12:57.120 --> 0:12:59.959 new infants. By the time Annie was about eight years old, 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.679 the state legislature began to crack down on non licensed midwives, 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.160 which is to say all of them. The state of 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.520 Alabama soon established a regulatory board which managed all registration 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.960 and training. And while this seems like a sensible chapter 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.440 in the March toward progress, the truth was a bit 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:20.679 more complicated. You see, America didn't have a midwife problem 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:24.040 like the American Medical Association claim. Rather, it was the 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:27.240 midwives who had a problem on their hands. The issue 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.679 here was one of inclusion. Long ago, Europe had established 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.720 midwiffery schools and accepted them as integral parts of the 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:38.040 medical field. But this was not true for America. Instead, 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.640 American medical schools refused to accept women into their ranks, 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.439 let alone black women. They wanted to replace all midwives 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:49.000 with male doctors, many of whom lacked functional knowledge and 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:52.640 culturally competent care. After her mother died when Annie was 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:54.959 about eighteen years old, she went to work to support 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.760 her family. She took up work as a domestic servant. 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.360 A few years later, already having had a child of 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:02.559 her own, she began to consider what it might mean 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.040 to her to become a midwife. It was when she 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.400 received heaping praise while helping a local doctor deliver her 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.120 employer's child that she realized that her life's course had 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:15.040 already been charted. She took up work as a granny woman, 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.160 just as her mother had been. Annie was working in 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:20.920 rural communities at a time when white doctors refused to 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:24.240 deliver black babies. She was one of thousands who continued 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.440 to work across Alabama. Often, the families that Annie and 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.600 her fellow midwives worked with were living in deep poverty. 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.360 Even still, these birth workers considered their path a calling 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.280 and found ways to barter and give their time beyond 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.880 delivering children. They provided care for the household. They cooked 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:44.200 and cleaned, and helped prepare for the baby's arrival. They 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:47.520 prayed with scared parents and wiped the laboring mother's brow. 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.480 Unlike the medical doctors of her day, who wished to 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:54.120 expedite childbirth by any means necessary, Annie made sure that 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:57.080 she didn't rush it. She would later recall a birth 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:00.240 she attended alongside a supervisor. A mother had gone into 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.040 labor with twins. The first child was born, but he 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.760 wasn't breathing. Her supervisor set the baby aside, assuming he 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.640 was dead, as she assisted the second child from the 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.840 birth canal. Annie, having never been trained in mouth to 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.080 mouth resuscitation, had a sense that this was the only option. 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:20.040 She worked tirelessly for forty five minutes, and soon the 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.280 baby began to cry. In the nineteen forties, she began 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:25.760 taking classes with the Mobile County Board of Health to 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.640 secure her license and registration. Pen in hand and paper 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:33.200 on the desk, she sat quietly as teachers conducted their lessons. 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:37.239 They discussed hygiene and pre and postnatal care, the curriculum 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:40.200 that was already familiar to many in the classroom, but 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.400 it wasn't the hard and necessary skills that she believed 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.840 she was most gifted with, but something more spiritual, something 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:50.920 more ineffable, something that she would call mother wit. Annie 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.120 believed that there was this God given wisdom, her common sense, 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:56.960 and she relied heavily on it in her practice. By 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.600 nineteen forty nine, she was certified by the state board 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.560 and joined the professional ranks of the new medical establishment. 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.080 Annie kept working in homes, and public hospital health care 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:12.200 infrastructure kept expanding. Finally, hospitals allowed black mothers inside, leading 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.800 to a decrease in the demand for in home midwives. 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:19.600 By nineteen seventy six, the state outlawed midwiffery. Altogether, Annie 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.080 and one hundred and fifty of her peers were allowed 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.160 to continue their care, but theirs was a dying breed. 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.480 She had delivered hundreds of babies in her career and 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:31.240 had only lost four of them, and as a reward, 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.000 very quietly, in nineteen eighty four, she received a letter 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.480 in the mail. It was from the state of Alabama 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:40.280 telling her that her license and those of all her 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:45.080 fellow midwives were being revoked immediately. At seventy three years 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.480 of age, Annie had been the last practicing granny midwife 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.160 in Mobile County. As she would later recall, it was 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:59.000 one of the saddest days of her life. Annie Lee 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.760 Logan didn't go quietly. Although she never practiced again, She 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:05.879 met a young student, Catherine Clark, in the summer of 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:11.120 nineteen eighty four. Together they created Annie's autobiography, entitled Mother Wit, 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:15.080 an Alabama midwife Story. Doing so helped to capture the 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.680 story of Annie's life, as well as an institution and 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:22.600 a community of healers that was all but eradicated. Annie 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:26.480 passed away in nineteen ninety five, and although midwiffery is 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:29.719 still illegal in Alabama, she had lived long enough to 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:33.040 see the tides change. With the social upheaval of the 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:37.480 nineteen sixties and seventies, layman whiffery began to make a comeback. 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.800 The fight for bodily autonomy was a hot issue during 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:43.280 the surge of the women's movements, and of course it 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.640 made sense that focus landed on pregnant and birthing bodies. 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:50.200 Those who sought to decriminalize midwiffery knew that a sacred, 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:54.080 ancient practice had been sent underground. They wanted choices and 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:56.679 a holistic kind of healthcare that treated them as so 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:00.480 much more than faceless numbers on a hospital chart. Today, 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.080 midwiffery is legal to practice in all fifty states, although 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.919 home births still remain illegal in seven of them. Even still, today, 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:10.600 more than ninety eight percent of births in the United 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.439 States take place in hospitals. But shockingly, a set of 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:18.400 twenty eighteen statistics tell us that the maternal mortality rates 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.520 in the US is higher than it was in nineteen ten. 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:25.399 Among forty nine other developed countries across the world, we 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:28.359 come in first place with our death rates. That's a 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.160 top spot that comes with no prize, just a whole 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.600 lot of justified scorn. Today we are in the throes 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:39.000 of a maternal healthcare crisis, one that continues to disproportionately 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:42.800 affect the same communities of women that Annie had dedicated 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:51.600 her life to serving. My wife and I have a 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:54.680 deep connection to the world of midwiffery. We know from 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:58.080 multiple berths just how important their advice was in preparing 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.240 for the big day, as well as their stay hetty 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.640 hand and calming spirits in the delivery room. Midwives are 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:06.560 guardian angels, and to learn about the way our society 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:10.920 has treated them is honestly beyond heartbreaking, but in their 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.000 stories we can still find hope. And if you stick 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.320 around through this brief sponsor break, my teammate Robin Miniter 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.880 will tell you one more tale of a healer finding 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:22.359 their place in the world. 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.720 Stenny Slawa Lishtinsky was born May eighth, eighteen ninety six 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.720 in Poland. Her family was poor and Catholic, and her 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:37.920 childhood was marked by war. Her father had been drafted 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.200 into military service, which left Stennyslava's mother to take care 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:44.240 of the family, the home, and the finances. They moved 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.520 around some, spending a few years in Rhodijonio before returning 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:50.720 to their home in the city of Wuch. By nineteen seventeen, 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.000 Stony Slawa was married. By nineteen twenty three, she and 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.120 her husband, Bronislau, had three children. She spent the next 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:00.400 few years raising their family and finishing her Midwi freequel horses. 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.240 Her life was full. Delivering babies brought so much joy 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.840 to the families that she worked with, but this happiness 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:11.560 wouldn't last. On September first, nineteen thirty nine, Germany invaded Poland. 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:15.439 Nazi forces spread throughout the country, establishing ghettos for Jews, 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.000 the Roma and other designated enemies. On September eighth, the 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.359 Nazis arrived, in which they quickly got to work rearranging 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:25.240 the city and everyone who lived there, eventually erecting the 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.800 second largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe. The 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:31.439 neighborhood where Stanny Slava had been born and raised was 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.199 turned into a hell on earth. Fences were erected and 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.919 barbed wire lined them. Armed Nazi troops patrolled the perimeters. 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:42.200 Sanni Slava watched as her neighbors, patients, and friends were corralled, starved, 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.080 and abused. In the bright light of day, she secretly 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.199 slipped them food and falsified documents from the outside, risking 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.280 her own life. As part of the resistance, The Nazis 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.720 continued to close in. Stanislava's family was arrested in nineteen 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.000 forty three. Two of her sons were sent to a 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:00.119 concentration camp. She and her daughter, Sylvia, who was as 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:03.359 a medical student, were both sent to Auschwitz Berkanew. Stanny 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:07.440 Slawa Lishtinski became inmate number four, one, three, five five. 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.200 She also became the camp's midwife. The Nazis had a 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.159 vested interest in the fertility and reproduction of their captives. 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:17.640 They enlisted Stanny Slava to help do their bidding. Day 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:19.920 and night Standy Slava took care of the imprisoned women 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:22.439 in one of the barracks. The thirty bunks nearest to 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:25.080 the stove made up what was known as the maternity ward. 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:27.800 The stove, which was shaped more like a trough, ran 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.320 like a line through the building center, but it was 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:33.639 rarely used for warming. Instead, these troughs became places for 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:36.760 laboring women to lay. It was a frigid, horror filled 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.560 place that she later wrote about, being infested with bold, 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:43.640 hungry rats, slicked with bodily fluids, and lacking any access 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:46.280 to basic hygiene or comfort that would keep these mothers 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.680 and their babies safe. The Nazis sentenced every newborn baby 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:52.520 to death. It was ordered that the baby's umbilical cord 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:55.400 was not even to be cut, but rather immediately thrown 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:58.680 with the placenta into the trash. Later, the babies were 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:02.040 ordered to be drowned. A sign to complete this deed 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:05.040 was a disgraced midwife who had been convicted of infanticide. 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:08.440 While still on the outside, mothers often silently bore witness 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:12.439 to this entire atrocity. Even still, standy Slava did everything 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:14.880 she could to provide these mothers and newborns with comfort, 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.440 if only for a short while. She would pray over 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.560 each baby, baptizing it with warm water and herbs. She 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:22.800 would swaddle the baby in any extra sheet that could 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:25.840 be traded for, and created diapers from torn strips of fabric. 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:30.080 After mid nineteen forty three, a pivot happened. Non Jewish 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:33.400 newborns were now permitted to live. The ESSSS would later 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:35.640 decide if a baby could pass as Aryan, it would 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:39.520 be rehomed and Germanized. Standy Slava secretly tattooed these babies 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:41.920 and communicated as much to their mothers in the hopes 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.000 that they could one day be reunited. In all, standy 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.840 Slava delivered more than three thousand infants. Remarkably, she never 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:52.159 lost a single mother or child during birth. Each baby 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.119 was born alive and healthy, and despite the world they 0:22:55.160 --> 0:22:58.600 were entering into, they were ready to live. According to 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:01.560 her counting, over fifteen hundred of these infants were drowned 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:04.440 at the hands of the SS. Another one thousand died 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.120 of cold and starvation. A few hundred were transported for placement. 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.680 Only thirty survived everything. When the war ended and Auschwitz 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:16.199 was liberated, Standi Slawer returned home to Wooch. There she 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:18.800 continued to serve as a midwife to her community until 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.920 she retired in nineteen fifty eight, and before she died 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:24.680 in nineteen seventy four, she got to once again meet 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:27.119