The Rhetoric of Midwifery
What roles should midwives play within our healthcare system? Must they have certified degrees and be under the jurisdiction of a professional board? Do notions of gender create competition and erect barriers between the medical professions? The Rhetoric of Midwifery offers new insights into understanding these questions within the context of our present-day medical system.
As a point of departure, Mary M. Lay analyzes the public discussion over non-academically trained-or direct-entry-midwives within Minnesota. From 1991-1995, that state held public hearings about the possible licensing of traditional midwives. Lay focuses on these debates to examine the complex relationships of power, knowledge, and gender within the medical profession.
Lay examines the hearings and provides a framework for appreciating the significance of these debates. She also details the history of midwifery, highlighting ongoing concerns that have surfaced ever since the profession was created, centuries ago.
In the remaining chapters, she focuses on the key testimonies offered during the debates. Capturing the actual testimony of midwives, home-birth parents, nurses, physicians, and attorneys, The Rhetoric of Midwifery reveals how the modern medical profession seeks to claim authority about birth. Lay bolsters her argument by culling from such sources such as historical documents, an internet discussion group, and conversations with modern midwives
As our medical healthcare system continues to undergo convulsive change, The Rhetoric of Midwifery will continue to enlighten, challenge, and inform.
The Rhetoric of Midwifery [focuses on] the hearings held in Minnesota on the issue of licensing traditional, direct-entry midwives. . . . Professor Lay shows how midwives have been marginalized by male attendants at least since the beginning of the seventeenth century. . . . [Lay offers] a subtlety of insight.
The Rhetoric of Midwifery is well structured. It explains the previous and current controversies surrounding midwifery and birth in a lucid manner, so that those outside the field may easily comprehend the material. . . . A wonderful scholarly addition to the field, The Rhetoric of Midwifery will also be a valuable resource not only for the field of midwifery, but also for womenÆs studies, the medical field, for historians, sociologists, philosophers, and rhetoricians.
A book on midwifery is not apt to attract the attention of communication educators. Yet in Mary M. LayÆs capable hands, this seemingly benign topic serves as a conduit for how rhetoric functions in society to create a presumed knowledge, to shape attitudes, and to sustain embedded power differences within a particular culture. . . . Her work provides a fascinating account made all the more powerful by the womenÆs voices on both sides of the issue that pervade the book. . . . A wonderful read.
women's ways of knowing echoes centuries-old themes. This book is a must-read for all those interested in the ongoing struggles between medicine and midwiferyùtwo radically different systems of authoritative knowledge about birth.
A fascinating, nuanced study of the practice and possibilities of midwifery.
Mary Lay is professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, and director of its graduate rhetoric and scientific and technical communication program. She is the author of several books on technical writing and communication, and is the co-editor of Body Talk: Feminist and Rhetorical Studies of Reproductive Sciences.
1. The Current Debate over Direct-Entry Midwifery in the United States
2. Rhetorical Analysis and the Midwifery Debates
3. The Rhetorical History of Midwifery
4. The Minnesota Midwifery Study Advisory Group: Professional Jurisdictions and Boundary Spanning
5. Licensing Rules and Regulations: Normalizing the Practice of Midwifery
6. Jurisdictional Boundaries: Claiming Authority over Scientific Discourse and Knowledge
7. Issues of Gender and Power: The Rhetoric of Direct-Entry Midwifery
Appendix A - Additional Notes on Methodology and Sources
Appendix B - Glossary of Birth Terms
Appendix C - Rhetors Involved in the Minnesota Hearings and Chronology of the Hearings
Notes
Bibliography
Index
