..so let's say we get out there and do more in 2014

There's still time to donate

We're getting close to our target goal to help keep on the lights here in 2014 at The Big Push for Midwives with the New Year here upon us. On Friday, Jan. 24, 2014, we will celebrate our 6th PushDay and another trip around the sun aimed at expanding access to Certified Professional Midwives and out-of-hospital maternity care. But CPMs and the families who choose them still need your help! Let's make this year's goal. If you've been meaning to make a contribution, now's the time.

What Have You Done for Me Lately:
The Big Push 2013 Roundup

To help push harder in 2014, the Big Push for Midwives Campaign doubled down just lately to gather resources, provide strategic planning and message development, outreach proactively with news media, and create new tools and helpful services for state consumer and midwife groups that are actively working on legislation to license CPMs, envisioning the day when CPMs are licensed in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam.

2013 saw the Big Push lose and regain its PushMediaMachine powered by Vocus and the Big Push Steering Committee. From the early days on the campaign in 2007 and 2008 to the headlines we see in the media today, there is so much to be grateful for across the good PushNation of tens of thousands of people. If you are left wanting for more:

• Review the latest PushHeadlines.
• See all the news that's fit to push in the Newsroom.
• Get inspired by just how much your donation means.

The Big Push for Midwives Campaign is not a top-down organization, rather, the essence of grassroots. The Big Push has always been the work of a coalition of the PushStates groups, and the collective focus has always been to create a mutual-help project for all the consumers and midwives pushing in the statehouses and sharing ideas, strategies, successes, and setbacks to create efficiencies and interconnectivity.

Thank you!

We really can't say it enough - so we'll say it again here. Thank you. We have the best group of members and supporters that we could ask for, and it's because of you that we have been able to keep going.

How far do we have to go?

We're just 50 monthly donors (at $10/mo) away from hitting our goal and ringing the bell on making our 2014 target goal - but why stop there? Let's see if we can beat our record. In addition to donations, we could use your help spreading the word to your friends and family (and clients if you are a professional) to expand the circle of the birth activist community.

Have you ever stopped to think about how one group's version of what is true and what isn't becomes the dominant voice? All through history, one group or another has decided that it had the insider information not only about God but about life, the world, how things were supposed to work. If you weren't part of the in-group, if you doubted their worldview, their claims to orthodoxy, you were a heretic and life could get pretty unpleasant if the orthodox view had the support of the government. So, pagans against early Christians, Christians against pagans, Christianity against Islam, Islam against Christianity, Catholics against Protestants -- and that's just Europe and colonial America. Almost every religion was oppressed somewhere at some time and, if it became dominant, has done some oppressing itself.

A state-forced orthodox worldview can lead a lot of people to embrace a belief which, empirically, turns out to be false. But those "heretics" who saw the flaws in the worldview, those who are the ones who said "you know, by my scientific calculations, the earth is probably round,"  and, in addition, "it revolves around the sun." They got into a lot of trouble when the state- or religion-enforced world view saw a flat earth that was the center of the universe.

When finding ways to make sure that Consumers can access the provider of their choice so that they can have a safe birth in the location of their choice, you inevitably run into the dominant worldview of the American Medical Association (AMA). To wit, in 1914, a man named Abraham Flexner told the AMA to get in one room, agree on what teaching was right, and then lobby the State and Federal governments to enforce this with their power. He didn't use the word "orthodoxy," but it just means "right teaching." All of the AMA's justification for dominance comes from the idea that they are "orthodox," and the best plan is to have the state force their ideas on us "heretics."

We now mock some of the pre-enlightenment ideas of the Church, such as the "flat earth" theory, but we aren't really any better. We still let orthodoxy dictate healthcare decisions instead of the evidence. For example, physicians knew for 20 years that they should not x-ray pregnant women, but it was "standard of care" i.e. "orthodoxy." So they kept on doing it until forced to stop.

Our challenge is very simple but very difficult: No matter what we say or can prove, "they" are going to state an unwavering belief in a flat earth. "There be monsters over there!" "You are going to sail off the end of the world!" Our task is to get us the freedom to risk sailing that way anyway on the chance that we might discover a new world instead.

Fortunately, we've already done the math. The world is, indeed, round.

Special thanks to Keith Williston of Missouri for inspiring this PushBlog post. At the heart of Keith's work in the PushStates, in Missouri and beyond, is his family-owned freestanding birth center, A Mother's Love Birth Center. Keith and his wife Rachel Williston, CNM, CPM, encourage more people to become involved in the work of the PushStates.

• Are you working toward licensure for Certified Professional Midwives in your state? Are you planning to?
• Are you concerned about the future of VBAC and HBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean and home birth after cesarean)?
• Have you been frustrated by lack of consensus and infighting within your local birth community?
• Have legislative road blocks, back-door dealings, and insider politics at the state capitol prevented your bill from advancing?

If the answer to any of these questions is YES, then please join us at the PushSummit, on August 6 in Cary, NC, to learn from veteran birth activists who’ve been there in the trenches and will share their insight, wisdom, experience, and not-so-dirty tricks!

Discounted student rates are available.

The Summit’s PushUniversity is a unique opportunity for people who want to become agents of change to learn from the birth community’s experts on everything from effective organizing tactics, to grassroots mobilization, to utilizing the media—as well as the many resources available via The Big Push for Midwives—to promote positive messages about midwifery and out-of-hospital birth and to build effective legislative campaigns that expand access to the full range of birth options for families nationwide. Groups in every state that are working to improve birth can benefit from sending a representative to the Summit, not only to learn but to share. All of us have valuable information to share, and every time we leave our virtual worlds to spend face-time together, it makes our community stronger. Hope to see you there, and please share this link widely! http://bit.ly/PushSummit2011

_________________________________________

The Summit will take place alongside the MANA Region 3 conference, which has secured a special rate of $115 per room. Rooms can be booked at http://ncmidwife.org/MANARegion3Conf/?page_id=17

Please check your calendars and make plans to attend!